And So It Seemed To Confess
by nicalyse
Summary: He isn't worried about Rachel talking about him being in therapy at school. Nope, Puck's worried that Rachel might tell her dad what Puck used to do and Dr. Berry will get him sent back to juvie. AU.
1. Chapter 1

"I'm not going to a fucking shrink."

Puck's mom rolls her eyes and shoots him a pointed look from the driver's seat of her new car. The new car that she's driving because he wrecked the last one. And no, he doesn't really have a leg to stand on considering that the car that they're in is sitting in the driveway of his new therapist's office. Which is also, apparently, his house. It's in a nicer part of town, with a two-car garage and perfectly trimmed shrubs, and there are pots of autumn flowers sitting on either side of the steps that lead up to the porch. There's a little cobblestone path that leads off the driveway and around the side of the house, the path he's supposed to follow to get to where his new shrink is waiting for him.

"What kind of doctor doesn't have a real office?" Puck asks, trying for a different tactic.

"Stop it, Noah," his mother says, her tone totally neutral. The fact that she isn't pissed off right now really doesn't work in his favor. It's easier to get his way with shit if he can get her worked up to the point that she gives in just because she wants him to shut up. He used it all the time growing up. Of course, that hasn't worked in almost a year, since she found out that he'd gotten a girl pregnant. "Seeing a counselor is part of your probation, and my son isn't going to talk to some overworked family services drone."

Puck lets his head fall back against the seat, because this is the exact same thing he's been hearing since the day his mother picked him up from juvie. (One of the many, many things he's been hearing.)

Ten minutes later, he's sitting in big, brown leather armchair and avoiding eye contact with his therapist. He has dark, curly hair and is wearing a burnt orange sweater over a light blue collared shirt, which...whatever. He introduced himself as Dr. Berry, shaking Puck's hand and inviting him to sit.

"Noah, we don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about," Dr. Berry says, leaning forward to set the three-ring binder he had in his lap on the coffee table in front of them beside a carved wooden bowl full of green apples. Puck looks up and sees him shrug one shoulder. "We don't have to talk at all. You can come here once a week for the foreseeable future, and we can spend the whole hour sitting in silence if you want."

Puck rolls his eyes. "My mom would freak out."

"She won't find out," Dr. Berry counters with a little smile. "Everything that does or does not happen in this room is between us. Doctor-patient confidentiality. As far as the terms of your probation go, I'll simply verify that you attended therapy."

Okay, that's actually kind of awesome, knowing that none of this goes outside of this room. It's totally not badass to be talking to a shrink, and he doesn't want anyone to know. "Okay," Puck says after a second, nodding his head.

Puck sees his name printed on the label on the spine of the binder Dr. Berry picks up again. He wonders what's in there, what the guy already knows about Puck's life without even knowing him. "Do you mind if I ask a couple of questions?" Dr. Berry asks after a minute.

_Here we go_, Puck thinks, but he nods his head anyhow.

"The thing that landed you in trouble was hooking an ATM to your mother's car in an effort to steal it, right?" Puck nods and watches Dr. Berry write something. "And in June, you surrendered your parental rights to the child that you fathered." Puck nods again, slowly, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dr. Berry looks up, his pen still poised to write. "You play football at McKinley, right? Who are you playing on Friday?"

"West Lima," Puck answers without thinking.

Dr. Berry makes a face. "You think this new coach can finally get us a win?"

"You know football?"

"I played for McKinley in high school. Hating West Lima is deeply ingrained."

Puck looks at the guy appraisingly, though he tries not to make it obvious. Thirty years ago or whatever, he was probably pretty perfect for football. Offense, Puck would guess if you made him.

They spend the rest of the hour talking about football, first about McKinley's team and Coach Beiste and then about whether the Bengals are going to amount to anything this year, and Puck almost forgets that he's talking to a therapist. The only time Dr. Berry says something that seems even a little shrink-like is when he makes a comment about being surprised that Puck plays offense instead of defense given that he seems to have "aggressive tendencies."

He expects his mom to ask all sorts of questions when she picks him up, but Abby's in the back seat babbling away about her gymnastics class, and the only thing his mom asks is whether he'd rather have tacos or sloppy joes for dinner. That's fine with him; he doesn't want to talk about being in therapy at all.

* * *

><p>School is weird now that he can't do all the shit he used to do. Figgins made it pretty clear when he came back that he wasn't going to fuck around with any bullshit, and even though the dude lets a lot of stuff slide, Puck's pretty sure he's actually serious this time. One misstep and Puck's fucked. That means no more dumpster tosses, no more slushie facials, no more cutting classes to hang out in the back of the auditorium or under the bleachers. It's boring. Like, he comes to school, and he goes to class, and then he goes to football practice, and that's it.<p>

His mom's got him on lockdown - she even took the keys to his truck - so he can't even go for a cruise to like, blow off some steam. She drops him off in the morning and picks him up after practice, then takes him home and expects him to do his homework and help with chores and stuff, which is whatever, but he's so fucking bored.

He's been playing a lot of video games to try to make up for it, but even shooting virtual Nazis in the head is starting to get old.

He's been seeing Dr. Berry for a month now, and they still haven't talked about any of the stuff that Puck doesn't want to talk about, but that he's pretty sure a shrink would be interested in hearing, like his dad and Quinn and Finn and that little girl out there who has his nose.

(He thinks about it every time he walks past the baby photo of him that's hanging on the wall right outside his mom's bedroom. Instead of seeing himself in a seventeen-year-old picture, he sees that little girl all wrapped up in a pink blanket in the nurses' arms at the hospital the day they signed the papers. Yet another reason not to go to the end of the hall.)

Talking about all of that shit doesn't make sense to him, not really. If you're trying to move past the bad stuff in your life, isn't it better to just forget about it than to like, drag it all out again and talk about it and look at it and pick it apart looking for some hidden meaning that he's already pretty sure isn't there?

Whatever. He'll be on probation until he's eighteen, which is next summer, and then he won't have to do the therapy thing any more. He can bullshit his way through an hour a week for the seven months or so.

"When did you start playing football?" Dr. Berry asks casually during one appointment. Puck was telling him about last Friday's game and how it puts them that much closer to the district championship. Football is one of the things he feels comfortable talking about because it has fuck all to do with his feelings.

"Third grade was the first year that they did peewee football. All the teams were colors."

Dr. Berry grins like he knows something Puck doesn't. "What team were you on?"

"Red."

"Why did you start playing?"

Puck thinks back to third grade, and how Carole was the one who dropped him off with Finn for their first practice because his mom had to work. "Finn wanted to play, so I went along with it. I guess it stuck." Really, back then, Puck wanted to play baseball and did little league every summer. He hadn't ever really considered football as something he might want to do. After he started though, he had enough fun with Finn and everyone else that he didn't want to quit.

"Who's Finn?"

"My-" Puck cuts himself off, because fuck. He doesn't want to answer the question, but he thinks that not answering it is going to make Dr. Berry think it's like, a thing. "He was my best friend," he finally answers, saying it like it doesn't matter. He could lie, but he doesn't really see the point in that, even if he doesn't want to talk about this.

"He isn't any more?" Dr. Berry prompts.

_Fuck_. "No."

One-word answers. That's definitely the way to go.

"Why not?"

It's a simple question. Everyone else in town knows why Puck and Finn aren't friends any more. Why shouldn't his therapist? Fuck, for all he knows, Dr. Berry _does_ know and just wants Puck to tell him himself for whatever crazy shrink reason.

"Because I got his girlfriend pregnant," Puck answers after a moment, getting right to the point. There's more to it, sure, but that really gets to the heart of it.

Dr. Berry doesn't say anything, just nods his head and make a note on the yellow legal pad in front of him. Puck doesn't say anything either. He doesn't want to talk about this.

It seems like they've been sitting in silence for a long time when Dr. Berry finally speaks. "Do you miss your friendship with Finn?"

Puck just shrugs. _He doesn't want to talk about this._

But the answer is yes. He and Finn got each other. The guy was the brother Puck never had, even though that sounds like bullshit; he was closer to Finn than he was to like, the cousins on his dad's side or whatever, which makes him more important than family. He'd always kind of thought that he and Finn were the guys who would be friends forever, like the old dudes who sit in coffee shops shooting the shit for hours on end, talking about the good ol' days.

"How long were you and Finn friends?" Dr. Berry asks after a while.

Since second grade, when they were both in Mrs. Zimmer's class and she made the mistake of sitting them next to each other on the first day of school. "I don't want to talk about this," Puck says instead. Talking about Finn and the end of their friendship is a direct road to talking about Quinn and the baby and...no.

Dr. Berry nods. "How did you do on the history test you took last week?" he asks neutrally. It feels like an out to Puck, and he jumps on the opportunity gratefully.

Just when he'd started to get comfortable with this therapy bullshit, it starts getting all weird and feeling way too personal again. He really doesn't understand the people who do this shit voluntarily, because it's really weird, feeling like someone can see what's going on inside your head.

The wind hits Puck square in the face when he walks out of the little sun porch that's between outside and Dr. Berry's office, prompting him to walk around the side of the house towards the driveway with his head down. That's how he doesn't see the girl walking at him, barreling around the corner. He walks straight into her and nearly knocks her on her ass.

"Shit." He grabs her forearms and manages to keep her upright, even though they both stumble off the side of the path onto the mulch under the shrubs that line this side of the house. "Sorry."

"It's fine," the girl says, blinking up at him with huge brown eyes. She pulls away from him and steps back onto the path, brushing her hair out of her face. "I'm fine."

She's walking past him before he can even think about figuring out why she looks so familiar, all that dark, shiny hair and those eyes that he knows he's seen up close before, the skirt of her plaid dress hitting the backs of her thighs as she walks.

It bugs him all through dinner and when he's sitting in his room trying to make himself read this crap about a pond and the simple life for English, which he just gives up on after a while. It's that thing where he _knows_ that he knows who she is, and he just can't place it, and it's really annoying. He takes a pass through his friends on Facebook, to see if maybe it's someone that he knows in passing from class or whatever, but she definitely isn't there, and he doesn't know where else to look.

He's lying in bed, right on the edge of sleep, when he realizes why she looks so familiar and ruins any chance he had of falling asleep any time soon.

She's that Rachel chick he used to throw slushies at, the girl who tried to make the show choir thing happen at the beginning of sophomore year, mooning around Finn until he found out that Quinn was pregnant. (Puck heard later that the choir thing fell apart when the teacher who was sponsoring it left to be an accountant.) Puck backed off on the slushie thing for most of last year with all the stuff with Quinn going on, and this year it was the football team versus the hockey players in a slushie war before he got his ass sent to juvie, so he didn't bother seeking out any of the freaks. It's probably been a year since he did that to her, but like...seeing her at Dr. Berry's office today is weird.

He figures she must be another of Dr. Berry's patients, one of those people who sees a therapist because she wants to or thinks she needs to or whatever. Is getting slushies thrown in your face something that you talk about with a shrink? Did Dr. Berry already know who Puck was before he started seeing him because this girl has talked about him?

That's sort of a mindfuck.

He forces himself to close his eyes instead of thinking about it any more. It's not going to do any good.

* * *

><p>"Can I ask you a question?"<p>

Dr. Berry's mouth quirks. "Of course, Noah."

"Do you have another appointment after mine? Like, do you see someone else?"

"You're my last appointment on Wednesdays, actually. Why do you ask?"

"I ran into a girl outside last week, when I was leaving," he answers. "I thought maybe she was one of those people who do the therapy thing because they want to."

Dr. Berry grins. Puck's general distaste for therapy is something that he was actually willing to talk about back when he first started coming here, so the guy knows all about it. "It was probably my daughter. I don't think anyone came back here last Wednesday."

"Oh." He's still confused. Dr. Berry is black, and Rachel doesn't look like she is at all. But Dr. Berry doesn't even remember anyone coming back to his office after Puck's appointment, and someone obviously did, so maybe he's just confused.

"You're in the same class at McKinley, actually," Dr. Berry says, oblivious to Puck's skepticism. "Rachel Berry?"

Rachel Berry.

_Fuck._

"I don't think I know her," Puck says. It isn't a lie, exactly, because he doesn't know her. Shit, he didn't even know her last name. She was just this girl that he threw frozen drinks on. And besides, it can't be the same girl, right? Because this guy is black, and that girl most definitely isn't.

He watches Dr. Berry stand up, setting his binder on the coffee table and walking to his desk to pick something up. He comes back and holds out a framed picture to Puck, who kind of has to take the thing. It's a school photo of a girl - the same girl from last week, the same girl he used to throw slushies on - wearing a yellow sweater and a bright smile. "That's her," he confirms when he sees the question on Dr. Berry's face.

He leans forward to lay the frame on the coffee table, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. Maybe his black doctor adopted a white baby. Hell, maybe Puck's baby was adopted by a family who looks different from her, black or Asian or whatever.

He finds himself wishing, not for the first time, that there was a clock in this room so he knew how much longer he had to sit here. Instead of a clock though, Dr. Berry sets this little timer every week that goes off when their hour is up.

"You don't have to worry, Noah," Dr. Berry says softly, jerking Puck out of his thoughts. "Rachel understands that she isn't to talk about any of my patients at school, even if she does know them. And I don't discuss patients with my family," he adds.

Puck just nods instead of correcting him. He isn't worried about Rachel talking about this at school; with his reputation, he can get away with whatever the fuck he wants to do, no matter what anyone says. Nope, Puck's worried that Rachel might mention what Puck used to do and Dr. Berry will say something to his P.O. that'll get him sent back to juvie.

He brings up an episode of _Criminal Minds_ he saw to keep from talking about himself - it's a tactic that he knows Dr. Berry sees through, but it keeps the dude off his back, so whatever - though in the back of his mind he's wondering if there's anything he can do to keep the girl from saying anything.

* * *

><p>Sweet-talking Figgins' secretary out of Rachel Berry's class schedule and locker number is so easy it's almost insulting. It's been a while since he's run game on a cougar, but all it takes is a flash of a smile and a compliment on her earrings and she's handing him a piece of paper from her printer. She's kind of flustered, so she blacks out the girl's social security number and locker combination, but she doesn't bother with Rachel's home address - though that confirms that she's exactly who he thinks she is - or phone number.<p>

"Are you that hard up Puck?" Santana asks meanly when he steps out of the office folding up the paper. "Going after that."

He rolls his eyes and shoves Rachel's schedule into his back pocket. "Suck it, Santana."

"Yeah, yeah, and choke and die, whatever." She falls into step beside him as he walks towards the cafeteria. "Are you coming over tonight?"

He glances over at her, taking in the way that her Cheerio skirt hits the fronts of her thighs as she walks and wishes that he could say yes. "I'm still grounded."

She rolls her eyes. "You should've thought about how it was going to affect me before you tried to steal a fucking ATM," she snaps, and yeah, they haven't fucked since before that happened. It's not like he can do anything about it though. "So fucking lame, Puck."

He glares at her back when she quickens her steps to walk away from him. Santana's always had a mean streak, but it's been worse lately, and he doesn't know why. It doesn't matter. She isn't going to talk about it unless she wants to. He misses hanging out with her more than he misses having sex with her anyhow, which is kind of weird. When she doesn't have her Satan hat on, Santana's actually kind of awesome, which is why they've kept up this thing they have going on for so long. Otherwise, Puck's a one-and-done kind of guy.

Anyways.

Now that he has all of this information about Rachel though, he needs to decide how best to use it. At first, he thought he wanted to just play it straight: Apologize for slushying her and ask her to please not tell her dad and get his ass tossed back to juvie. Except he doesn't know anything about this girl. Maybe she's already forgotten about all of the stuff that happened freshman and sophomore year, and bringing it up to her will just remind her of what an ass he was. Or maybe she didn't recognize him at her house, so he doesn't need to be worrying about it at all.

He can't just let it go though. Juvie fucking sucked. He makes up stories about how badass he was when he was there when people ask, but the guys there were hardcore, and the whole experience was not a positive one. He really doesn't want to go back to that fucking place again. If that means that he has to pick up trash at the park on Saturday afternoons and see a shrink every week, fine. That's why he cut that deal in the first place.

And if it means that he has to figure out what's up with this Rachel chick, he will.

The way he sees it, getting this shit taken care of sooner rather than later is the way to go, so he starts hanging around the hallway where her locker is that afternoon. He takes the chance to watch her, trying really hard not to just get distracted by the way her little gray skirt falls against her thighs. (And fuck, how did he never notice her legs before?) Instead, he watches the careful way that she puts her books in her backpack, how she closes the door gently before walking away instead of slamming it closed like everyone else on the planet.

The thing is, while everyone else in the hallway is busy talking to their friends or checking their phones, Rachel isn't doing either of those things. Puck's straight-up ignoring anyone who tries to talk to him - he's _busy_ - and his phone has buzzed in his pocket a few times since the last bell rang. Rachel though, doesn't look like someone who's ignoring her phone.

She looks like someone whose phone just doesn't ring all that often.

He leaves school without any ideas. He doesn't know what the hell he's going to do with this girl.

* * *

><p>He kind of starts stalking her. It's definitely not the worst thing he's ever done. Hell, it isn't the worst thing he's ever done to her. It has its advantages though; he doesn't know how she hasn't gotten nailed for breaking the dress code with those skirts, but he's fucking grateful for the oversight. The <em>legs<em> on that girl.

He still has to go to his own classes, and he has football after school, but he makes a point of passing through hallways outside of her classes or the one where her locker is a couple of times a day. He doesn't know how much he's learning about her, but seeing her in those tiny little skirts makes it worth it.

She's almost always alone, though he sees her once talking to this goth Asian girl. She actually uses her locker the way she's supposed to, going between most of her classes and leaving her backpack in it during the day instead of carrying everything around all the time the way most people do. She carries her books against her chest, things like AP English and Chemistry and World History (which all the juniors take), and she's carrying a different colored three-ring binder every time he sees her.

He's making his now-normal pass through the hallway where Rachel's locker is when he sees Quinn standing with her there. He can't see Quinn's face, but he can see Rachel's, and the girl looks like she's about to cry, her eyes all wide and her cheeks pink. He pauses there at the end of the hall to see what happens. He's been trying to remember why he ever started slushying Rachel, but seeing this brings it all back; Quinn suggested it back when they first met, before she started dating Finn and shit got all fucked up. He wanted her, so he didn't have any problem being a dick to the short chick in the animal sweaters.

Quinn turns away from Rachel so quickly that the pleats on her skirt flare away from her thighs. She stalks down the hallway like a woman on a mission, and if she sees Puck standing there when she passes him, she doesn't bother to acknowledge him. That's standard from Quinn. He's pretty sure that she hasn't looked him in the eye even once since the day that they signed the paperwork that made them legally no longer parents. She's all about pretending that nothing has ever happened between them.

His feet are taking him towards where Rachel is still standing at her locker before he realizes that it's happening. "Don't let Quinn get to you," he tells her when he's close enough to talk without everyone in the hallway hearing what he says. "She's all fucked up."

Rachel blinks her big eyes at him quickly, swallowing hard. "Why are you talking to me?" she asks, speaking quickly. "Are you going to steal something from me?"

He fights the urge to roll his eyes. "Relax. I just know what a bitch she can be."

"I'm sure you do," she murmurs, her mouth twisted when she turns back to her open locker.

"You're Rachel, right?" She looks up at him again, blinking. Her eyes aren't shiny with unshed tears any more, but confused. "I'm Puck."

"I know who you are. What I don't know," she goes on, standing on her toes to retrieve her backpack from the hook in the top of her locker, "is why you're talking to me."

"Can't a guy just be nice?"

"Yes." She slips a French book into her bag and zips it shut, then closes her locker door smartly. She looks him straight in the eye when she says, "But I didn't think that you were capable of that."

She turns on her heel and is out of the hallway before he even realizes that she's going, leaving him standing there next to her locker trying to figure out what the hell just happened. He didn't have any expectations going into this conversation because he didn't plan on having it, but this is not at all how he would have expected any conversation with any girl to go. Puck is a stud, and girls don't talk to him like that.

Apparently Rachel Berry isn't like most girls.

* * *

><p>The fact that this girl has apparently already made up her mind about him almost bothers Puck more than it does that she's his therapist's daughter and shit.<p>

Puck is good with women, okay? All of them. He can convince teachers not to count him tardy when he walks into class five minutes late, he can talk cougars and cheerleaders into bed with equal ease, and all the little old ladies at temple (when he actually agrees to go with his nana) think he's like, super-charming. Even little girls like Puck, like the friends that Abby brings home with her sometimes. Women are Puck's _thing_, and Rachel being totally unaffected by him is really not okay.

He finds her at her locker before school a few days later. She lets out a sigh when he walks up beside her. "I don't know why you've been following me around or what you have planned, but if you could just please get it over with and let me get on with my life, I would appreciate it very much."

She has her head lowered a little so that her hair falls over her face, preventing Puck from reading her expression, but her voice sounds sad.

"I'm not planning anything," he tells her seriously, keeping his voice low. "Really," he adds when she doesn't react.

"Then why are you stalking me?" she asks, raising her head so she can meet his eyes.

His mind races, grasping for something to say besides _because I don't want you to tell your dad that I used to bully you._ "Because I need help in history," he finally says, rolling his eyes at his own stupidity. "I can't ask just anyone for help, because it's totally not badass, but I snagged Mr. Simms' gradebook and saw that you have one of the highest grades." That isn't true, but he figures that it could be. It doesn't look like she has many friends, so what else is she doing but being a good, upstanding student?

"Students' grades are confidential," Rachel says. There's a primness to her voice, but the words come out like she didn't even really think about it before she said them.

Puck shrugs one shoulder lazily. "Can you help me?"

He watches her tongue dart out to wet her lips. "Of course I _can_. The real question is, why would I? After the way that you used to treat me, why would I help you with anything?"

She closes her locker gently and walks away, leaving him standing there in the same hallway again, his eyebrows furrowed as he tries to figure out what the hell to do with this girl.

* * *

><p>"You seem distracted."<p>

Puck narrows his eyes a little at Dr. Berry. He doesn't know what the dude's getting at. They're talking about the unimportant shit that they usually do: football, schoolwork, food, Thanksgiving next week.

Dr. Berry shrugs at the expression on Puck's face, setting his pen down on the legal pad in his lap. "You're not an open guy, Noah, but you're usually at least engaged in the conversation. You seem a million miles away today."

Yeah, that probably has something to do with the fact that every time he comes here, he's afraid that he's going to find out that Rachel told her dad all about him and the guy hates him. "I guess I'm just tired," he lies.

"Are you not sleeping well?"

Puck rolls his eyes. "It isn't like, a thing." Dr. Berry's mouth quirks, and something about the moment makes Puck want to tell the truth. "There's this girl," he begins. "She's already decided that she knows what kind of guy I am, but she doesn't know me at all."

Okay, so it's a version of the truth. (The version that doesn't include, _the girl is your daughter_.)

"Well, our reputations precede us."

He knows. Up until now, that's generally worked in his favor. Now, of course, when it might really matter, it's biting him in the ass. "So I have to convince her that I'm not who she thinks I am?"

"You probably shouldn't lie to a girl in an effort to start some sort of...relationship," Dr. Berry says carefully. He talks like this a lot, mostly because he can't ever be totally sure what Puck's talking about. That's completely deliberate. "But if her opinion of you is wrong, I think it's certainly okay to show her who you really are. Maybe you can become friends."

It's actually not bad advice. Dr. Berry laughs when Puck tells him that and mentions that he's finally earning his mom's money.

What he needs to do is show Rachel that he isn't just the dude who used to throw drinks in her face.


	2. Chapter 2

So when Puck starts thinking about how to approach this thing with Rachel, he realizes something kind of important.

He doesn't know how to become friends with a girl. He knows how to flirt with chicks and like, seduce them, but he hasn't ever had a girl be just his friend. Santana's the closest thing, and they've been fucking off and on for a couple of years, so she probably doesn't count.

The last girl that Puck had to work to get with was Quinn, but he doesn't want to think about her even a little bit. The only other girl that he's ever had to make any real effort with was Santana, back when he first decided that he wanted to get under her skirt. It was the summer before freshman year, and she claimed to hate him, even though they ended up making out at every other party and their conversations were more innuendo than anything else. The night she finally agreed to let him put it in, they were at a party and he brought her a drink, vanilla rum with Sprite instead of Coke because he remembered that she likes cream soda.

Puck doesn't know a lot about Rachel. He knows that she can sing. He heard that, back before the show choir thing fell apart. He can, too, a little, and he plays guitar, but there isn't really a way to use that to his advantage with a girl who's already decided he's an asshole. He knows what classes she's taking, and he knows that she likes wearing short skirts. (He likes that, too.)

He wracks his brain all night for any information he might have about her, but all he comes up with is a series of mental images of her with slushies dripping off her face and down over her chest.

* * *

><p>He legitimately can't remember the last time that he got a slushie, but he stops at the 7-11 before school and buys a big gulp. It costs more than they used to, but if this works, it'll be worth the three bucks.<p>

Going without a lid is a habit, but he gets a straw from the guy behind the register and tucks his behind his ear. Driving with one hand on the wheel and the other holding the drink is an old, familiar motion, and even though his hand is freezing by the time he gets to school, he doesn't spill the thing. It's a good thing, too, since he's got his mom's car for the day. She has something going on at work and won't be able to get away until after dinner, but she still wasn't willing to give him back the keys to his truck, making him drop her off at her office first. Crazy woman.

Rachel is just closing her locker when he rounds the corner, and when she sees him walking towards her with the cup in his hand, she squeezes her eyes shut tight and presses her lips together. Seeing her brace herself like that - he's pretty sure she's holding her breath, too - makes him feel like a pretty colossal asshole.

"I picked it up for you when I was buying dip," he lies. He doesn't chew any more, but he doesn't need her to know that he stopped just to get her a slushie either. "It's grape," he goes on when she just blinks at him. He reaches up to retrieve the straw from behind his ear. "I know that's your favorite, because the last time I tossed a grape one in your face, you licked your lips before you cleaned yourself off." That's one of those mental images that he conjured up when he was trying to figure out how to like, befriend her. This is all he could come up with.

She takes the cup and straw from him, though he can tell that it's more automatic than deliberate, the result of him holding something out right in front of her. This is the first time that he's acknowledged what he used to do to her. He's not sure if her lack of a reaction is good or bad.

"I'm seriously going to bomb that history test next week, and I can't afford to fail," he says when she just keeps standing there blinking at him. That isn't a lie. "Will you please help me?"

He watches her swallow and look at the drink in her hand. "Is this supposed to be some sort of peace offering?"

"Yes." He must not sound totally sure of himself, because she gives him a reproachful look. "I'm trying, okay? I don't know how to do this."

She softens a little, shifting her weight and glancing at the cup again. "I suppose you are making some sort of effort."

"So you'll help me?"

A little rush of triumph goes through him when she nods her head.

* * *

><p>"My brain feels like it's going to melt," Puck complains. "Can we take a break?"<p>

Okay, so the studying thing was mostly just an excuse to get Rachel alone, though he definitely wasn't going to do that well on this test. After just an hour of reviewing with her, he thinks he's probably going to get his best test score in years. The girl is thorough.

Rachel smiles, setting her pen on top of her notebook. "Okay."

There hasn't been a girl in Puck's house since Quinn had the baby and moved back in with her mom back at the beginning of summer. Generally, Puck would rather spend his time at the girl's place instead of having her at his for a whole bunch of different reasons, but he can't exactly hang out with Rachel at her house and risk having her dad figure this shit out.

So he made a point of cleaning up his room before she came over, making sure that his guitar case is standing in the corner where she might notice it and putting all of his dirty laundry _in_ the hamper instead of just near it.

Puck closes his history book and sets it aside. "You wanna make out?"

Rachel raises an eyebrow. "Does that really work with girls?"

"Sometimes," he answers honestly, though he knows what it looks like when he gets shot down. Damn shame, too. She looks fucking hot today, wearing this tiny black skirt and a red sweater with a bow on it, and he wants to touch her hair to feel if it's as soft as it looks. Having her underneath him could be awesome.

"I thought you were dating Santana Lopez anyhow."

"Nah." What he and Santana do together hasn't been 'dating' in over a year. They're great together in bed, but they suck at being in a relationship together. Hell, maybe they both just suck at being in relationships period. "We're just friends."

"Is it true that you were sent to juvie for crashing your mother's car into the front of a convenience store in Akron?"

Even though it comes out of nowhere, he can't help laughing at the way that she blurts out the question. "No. I tried to steal an ATM with my mom's car."

"That's better," she deadpans. She tilts her head at him when he laughs again "Why did you do that?"

Fuck if he knows. (Lots of reasons, and no reasons at all, if he's being completely honest. Which he isn't.) "Million dollar question, baby. When I figure it out, I'll let you know." No, he won't. But whatever.

"Did it have something to do with Quinn Fabray?"

"Fuck, you're nosy."

"I'm sorry," she says quickly, moving so she's sitting on her knees on his bed. "I don't always think before I speak. It isn't any of my business, and I shouldn't have asked."

It's funny, he thinks, that her dad has been _not asking_ that question ever since Puck started going to therapy, and after just a couple of hours alone, Rachel blurts it out.

"'S'okay," he mumbles. They sit in silence for a few moments, Rachel staring at her notebook and him watching her. "Are you sure you don't want to make out?" he asks after a while, just to cut through the tension.

And you know what? Rachel is really pretty when she laughs.

* * *

><p>He snags one of the fries off Santana's plate when he sits next to her in the cafeteria after he's finished his own lunch, and the way she glares at him would be scary if he didn't know her so well.<p>

"Take another one and I will break your fucking finger, Fairy."

Yeah, legit his least-favorite nickname in all of history. Fuck Shakespeare and whoever decided that high school students hundreds of years later need to read his plays. They're whack.

He ignores her and licks the salt from his fingers. "'S'with the fries, Lo?" She usually only breaks the Cheerio diet for booze or post-sex cheeseburgers.

"I'm having a bad day," she answers, and it's a skill, the way she makes even that sound condescending.

"What's your damage?"

"Britt started dating the new guy. They're like Barbie and Ken and it makes me nauseous."

He makes a noise that doesn't mean anything. Puck's seen Brittany hanging out with the new kid, Sam. Puck knows him a little bit from football, and he seems like a cool dude. Britt's definitely a sweetheart (and a hot piece, he knows; he's tapped that), but he isn't touching the Brittany and Santana shit with a ten-foot pole. Puck's seen what happens to people who try to come between those girls, and he isn't interested in having anything to do with them. He's pretty sure Sam doesn't know what he's getting into. He almost feels bad for the guy.

"Did I actually see you talking to Rachel Berry this morning?" Santana asks around a mouthful of french fry.

"She tutored me for my history test."

"She's fucking annoying." Puck rolls his eyes. Trying to have a conversation with Santana when she's got her bitch face on is a waste of time. He only came over here because she was basically by herself (there are other Cheerios at the table, but Santana's ignoring them), but now he wishes he hadn't. "I'm serious. She never shuts her fucking mouth."

Puck smirks. "She's kinda hot." Santana makes a face. "Seriously. Have you seen the legs on that chick?"

"All I see when I look at her is her blabbermouth."

He doesn't know where this urge to defend Rachel is coming from, but it's not worth bickering with Santana over, so Puck just shrugs and stands up, snagging another fry from her plate and darting away from the table before she can make good on her threat to break his bones.

* * *

><p>He goes looking for Rachel after he gets his history test back. It's almost insultingly easy to find someone when you have her class schedule tucked in your wallet for quick reference, but it's definitely a time-saver. He catches her coming out of her chemistry class and falls into step beside her.<p>

"Hey."

Her eyes are wide when she looks up at him. "Hi." He doesn't miss the way that she glances around, like she's looking to see if anyone is paying attention. It doesn't really matter if they are.

"I got my history test back," he tells her. "I got an eighty-nine."

"That's great!" she exclaims. She stops in front of her locker, but instead of putting in her combo, she turns to face him. "I'm proud of you."

It's like, weirdly sincere, these words coming from this girl. Honestly, they barely know each other, but the way that she says it. _I'm proud of you._ He can tell that she really means it.

His mom was the last person to say she was proud of him, after he'd signed away his rights to his kid. She'd said that she was proud of him for doing what was best for her. He'd kind of hated it then.

"Thanks," he mumbles to Rachel. "I'm pretty sure it's because you helped me."

She flashes him a really pretty smile. "Well, I am a good tutor." She turns to her locker and starts putting in the combo. "I'd be happy to help you study for the next exam as well, if you think you still need the assistance."

"Yeah?"

She glances up at him from beneath her eyelashes. "Sure. Studying with you was actually kind of fun."

He grins. She's not wrong, though it would have been more fun if she'd let him kiss her. Studying is as good an excuse as any to keep hanging out with her, so he agrees.

He stops at 7-11 the next morning, gets a grape slushie big gulp, and swings by Rachel's locker on his way to his first class. "This time it's a thank you," he tells her before she can say anything.

"I-"

"Later, Rach," he interrupts, winking at her before walking down the hallway.

* * *

><p>"How's school going, Noah?" Dr. Berry asks.<p>

Puck shrugs his shoulders. "Fine. We just had a grade check, and everything is a C or above." Actually, the only thing he has a C in is geometry, and that's because he missed all the stuff about proofs, and that shit's ridiculous. It's kind of weird, because other than studying for that history test with Rachel, Puck hasn't been working that much harder at school. He'll never admit it aloud, but it probably has something to do with the fact that he's actually going to class and half-paying attention to his homework instead of blowing it all off the way he was at the beginning of the year.

"That's an improvement, isn't it?"

"I did better last year," he admits, though he regrets it the second the words come out of his mouth.

"Were classes easier last year?" Dr. Berry asks.

"The only thing that's ever been hard for me is math," Puck says instead of answering the question, hoping that he'll drop the subject.

"What was different about last year then?"

He should have known Dr. Berry wasn't just going to drop it.

"I guess I had something to prove."

Dr. Berry's voice is quiet when he asks, "To whom?"

_Quinn_. "Everyone."

Dr. Berry nods, scribbling something on his notepad. "What was different about this year?"

_Everything_. Puck shrugs his shoulders instead of answering. He's done with this line of conversation.

"You've mentioned that sometimes people see you differently than you are," Dr. Berry begins, setting down his pen. "Do you think they might start to see you differently if you did well in school? More accurately, maybe?"

"No," Puck answers honestly.

"Why not?" Dr. Berry asks, his head tilted slightly to the left.

"It didn't work last time I tried, so why would it work now?"

It didn't matter what Puck did, Quinn was determined to give up their baby. He got a part-time job, he pulled his grades up, and he was even faithful to her. He was a better boyfriend to Quinn than he ever was to anyone else, and she made it pretty clear that she hated him for the whole situation the entire time they were together. And the second that they signed those papers, their relationship was over, such as it was to begin with. She legit acts like nothing ever happened.

Dr. Berry is watching Puck as closely as he ever has. "Who did you want to see you differently last year?"

"No one important."

That's the truth now, even if it wasn't then.

* * *

><p>Rachel seems a lot more relaxed the second time that she comes to the house to help Puck study. She's wearing this dark blue dress with little flowers on it with red tights, which is actually sort of cute, and her hair is falling around her face in curls that are messy from the wind outside. It's sexy, really, and the fact that she's sitting on his bed with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle while she leans back against his headboard to quiz him about Tudor England?<p>

She's making focusing on the facts really difficult.

"You seem distracted," she says when he names Elizabeth as one of Henry VIII's wives, tilting her head at him.

"Wasn't Elizabeth his third wife?" Puck asks. He can't figure out how knowing any of this will ever be useful, but now that he's actually trying to learn the shit, it's annoying to get it wrong. But she's wearing this gold necklace with a little charm resting against her chest that he can't quite make out from where he's sitting, which is what he was paying attention to when she went over that crazy mnemonic device. Yeah, he's distracted.

"Jane Seymour was his third wife," she corrects gently. "Elizabeth was his daughter with Anne Boleyn, who was his second wife. She went on to become Elizabeth I, one of England's most well-known monarchs."

Puck rolls his eyes. "Even I think six wives is fucking ridiculous."

Her eyebrows come together a little. "Sorry," he mumbles. He figured that she's not really a fan of the cursing, so he's tried not to do it too much. That one slipped.

"You're frustrated," she says with a little shrug of her shoulders. "We can take a break."

Puck nods and stretches his arms over his head, arching his back. He's sitting in his desk chair, turned to face the bed, with his notebook balanced in his lap.

"You know, they did a television show about Henry VIII and his relationships a few years ago," Rachel says thoughtfully. "I'm sure it's rife with historical inaccuracies, but I've heard good things about its entertainment value."

"Hmm." He's distracted, again, by her necklace. "What is that?" he asks, moving forward so he's sitting on the bed beside her.

"What-what's what?" she stutters out nervously.

He brushes the tips of his fingers over her skin just beneath where the charm rest. "An _XO_," he murmurs, answering his own question. He watches her throat when she swallows. "Pretty."

"Thank you," she whispers. Her eyes are wide when he looks up at them. He's closer to her than he's ever been before, close enough that he can hear her shallow little breaths and see the lighter flecks of brown in her eyes. "Noah."

He can't remember ever hearing her say his name before, and something about the way his first name sounds when she whispers it makes him close the tiny bit of space between them, brushing his lips over hers. Her lips are so soft, and parted just slightly, so he does it again, but she pulls back before he can kiss her for real.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asks instead of answering the question because it's pretty obvious that he's kissing her. He watches her eyes, sees the way that she looks at his mouth. He lets the pads of his fingers graze across her skin until they're just above her collarbone. "Rachel."

She kisses him instead of answering

He can tell right away that this isn't something that she's done a lot of. It isn't bad - it couldn't be, not when her lips are this soft and she makes these tiny little noises in the back of her throat - but some of her motions are unsure, like she doesn't know what to do next or where to put her hands. It's hot though, the way her fingers dig into his bicep when she opens her mouth under his, and the little whimper she lets out when his tongue brushes against hers for the first time.

The look on her face when he rolls them so she's on top, her legs straddling his hips and her hair falling in a curtain around their faces, is enough to make his cock twitch. She blinks at him with big, wide eyes. "I don't-"

"Shh." He slips his hand into her hair - which is exactly as soft as it looks - and pulls her down gently until she's resting her hands against the pillow on either side of his head and kissing him again, a low sound coming from the back of her throat when he sucks lightly at her lower lip.

"We should be studying," she mumbles later, the words coming out between kisses. Puck doesn't agree, so he doesn't say anything, focusing his attention on trying to do whatever it was with his tongue that made her gasp and grind her hips down against his earlier. "Noah."

He groans instead of swearing like he'd like, because seriously? His name in her voice sounds fucking stellar.

She pushes herself away from him abruptly, sitting up straight and moving so she's kneeling next to him instead of being on top of him. "We have to stop," she insists.

"Is something wrong?"

"We need to study," she says instead of answering.

"Rachel." He watches her reach for her notebook, trying to discreetly smooth her hair. "Why are you freaking out?"

"I know all about your reputation," she says quietly, looking him straight in the eye. "I'm not that kind of girl."

"I know that," he tells her seriously. It's the truth. Rachel isn't like any other girl he's ever spent any time with. "And you know, not everything people say about me is true. Most of it, sure, but not all of it."

She smiles a little. "I know. I mean, I can already tell," she explains when he furrows his brow. "I think there's a very sweet guy hiding somewhere inside of you."

It's the kind of thing he'd normally scoff at, but the way that Rachel says it - like she really believes it - makes his stomach tighten a little, but not uncomfortably.

He leans over the edge of the bed to grab his notebook off the floor. "So this Henry guy married three chicks named Katherine, right?"

* * *

><p>Puck had been worried, after Rachel left on Saturday, that she might think that making out meant more than just making out. She put her number in his phone and sent him a cute little text message (<em>Studying was fun! xo<em>) after she left, and he immediately went into panic mode.

He didn't really mean to make out with Rachel. It just happened, and even though it was awesome and he totally wouldn't mind if it happened again, it doesn't mean that he wants to be someone's boyfriend. Girls like Rachel take things too far, too fast, and he'd been afraid that a little tongue wrestling would make her think that they were a thing.

He saw her crossing the parking lot at school on Monday morning, walking beside Artie, who Puck knows from geometry, and all she did was smile at him before ducking her head so she could hear whatever it was that Artie was saying to her.

So he knows that what happened with Rachel means more to her than it would to someone like Santana, but she isn't going all _Swimfan_ on him either, which is good. The point of getting to know her is so she won't hate him any more, and if she thinks that he broke her heart or whatever, she's definitely going to hate him.

Okay, so making out with Rachel was probably a bad idea.

Puck has poor impulse control. He has since he was a little kid with a bad habit of pushing kids down on the playground when they pissed him off. But after all of the stuff that happened last year, he's gotten better, with the exception of the ATM incident. What he's learned is that he just has to have a good reason _not_ to do whatever it is that he wants to do. Letting Carrie DiMarco go down on him at a party or throwing a punch at Azimio for talking shit was just going to prove to Quinn that Puck wasn't good enough to be the father of her kid. Now, getting written up at school or fucking up this thing he's trying to get going with Rachel is going to land his ass back in juvie.

That means that he needs to make sure that he keeps things light with Rachel. He can't have her getting some crazy crush on him and crying to her dad about this guy who broke her heart.


	3. Chapter 3

Texting with Rachel Berry is kind of a trip.

She spells out everything and always uses punctuation, which he would probably find more weird if he hadn't done quite a bit of texting with Quinn last year, who's totally anti-text speak or whatever. For every one message that Puck sends Rachel though, he gets back two or three just because she can't keep her replies short enough for just one. Texting makes sense for them though, because they don't have any classes together and she, apparently, is busy after school most days with dance classes and voice lessons and whatever else. They don't even have the same lunch period.

Puck's mom still has him basically on lockdown; he has to be home right after football practice even when she can't pick him up herself, and he hasn't even tried to convince her to let him go out like he used to on a weekend. He hasn't really spent much time going to parties in the last year, so it's not like missing them is anything new.

It just means that he has all kinds of time free to text with Rachel, who doesn't even give him attitude about the fact that he can't come to her house or whatever the way Santana does. And the fact that it's Rachel means that he isn't trying to convince her to sext, so they actually have conversations.

Rachel is a girl with a lot to say, and it turns out that she's actually kind of fun to talk to. In between telling him things about herself - and he learns a _lot_ of things about her - she asks him really random questions, like which of his tee shirts is his favorite and how he likes to spend rainy weekend days and whether he prefers curly or straight hair on girls. He has an epiphany when she tells him about having two dads and being born via surrogate; that's why she doesn't look like Dr. Berry. She gets really serious when she starts talking about New York and Broadway, which is the big post-graduation goal, but other than that, she's kind of hilarious and a lot more interesting than most of the girls that he's ever talked to.

And honestly, Puck doesn't put this much effort into getting to know girls that he just wants to bang. The only chick that he really feels like he knows is Santana, and that's the result of knowing her since middle school and spending nearly two of those years railing her pretty regularly. He got to know Quinn more than a little when she was pregnant, but there are things that you learn about a person when you live with them whether you - or they - want to or not. The fact that she majorly resented Puck for everything didn't really make her want to open up or whatever though.

He gets two pages into the assigned chapter of _Of Mice and Men_ when he reaches for his phone and taps out a quick, _what are you doing?_ to Rachel. This book is really depressing, and if he has to read it, he might as well take little breaks to talk to someone who's probably going to say something hilarious. That's why he started texting Rachel in the first place.

He only gets two paragraphs further in the story before his phone rings. "I just painted my nails," Rachel says when he answers. "I'll smudge the polish if I try to text."

He doesn't have anything to say to that, so he asks, "Have you read _Of Mice and Men_?"

She makes a noise in the affirmative. "It's sad."

"It's boring," Puck corrects, letting the book fall shut and dropping it off the side of the bed. He's read everything up to this point; it won't hurt to read the Spark Notes for this chapter. He reaches for his laptop to pull up the page.

"So you're talking to me to avoid doing your reading assignment?"

"Nah. I'll do it later," he lies, clicking on the right chapter on the website. "What are you doing?"

"Lying on my bed," she answers, filling Puck's head with images of what she might look like lying on her bed. He's never been in her room, but he imagines that her bedspread is purple. "I was watching _Funny Face_ while I painted my nails, but I paused it to call you."

"Is that one of those musicals?"

"It's a musical, yes. It isn't really one of my favorites, but I was in the mood for Audrey Hepburn."

He wants to tell her that it's weird, but he figures it isn't any different than being in a CoD mood instead of a Fallout mood, so whatever.

"Can I ask you a question, Noah?" She uses his name in texts too, but it's different to hear her say it. He usually doesn't like it when people his age call him Noah - he's been Puck for long enough that using his given name is like an insult - but it doesn't bother him when Rachel does it.

"What's up?"

"Why do you talk to me?" His mind goes a little blank at her question, but she keeps talking and saves him from having to respond right away. "I mean, even at the beginning of this school year, you were looking right through me. I just don't understand."

When she puts it like that, he thinks a better question is why she's talking to him. "Things change," he says instead. "I like talking to you."

It isn't a lie. He would rather talk to her than most people.

"I like talking to you, too," she says quietly, almost like she doesn't quite want to admit it. "You're different than I thought you were."

"Yeah?"

He hears her take a little breath on the other end of the line. "Yeah."

He kind of wants to ask her what she thought before, but she starts talking about Fred Astaire before he can, sucking him into this weirdly hilarious conversation about men who date younger women and midlife crises that leads into a discussion of foreign cars that actually doesn't make him want to roll his eyes every three seconds.

He really does like talking to Rachel.

* * *

><p>"Tell me about your friends, Noah."<p>

Puck gives Dr. Berry a weird look.

"You're a seventeen-year-old guy. You're popular." Dr. Berry shrugs his shoulders. "You never talk about your friends in here."

Rachel flashes through his mind, but Puck pushes it aside. "Being popular doesn't mean having a lot of friends," he says after a second. "Like, there are always people around and everyone knows your business, but that doesn't mean anybody's got your back."

"Does anyone have your back?"

His impulse is to say no, but he takes a second to think about the question. "Mike Chang. He's like, super chill, and we've been friends since middle school. And Santana, when she feels like it."

"Your girlfriend?"

Puck snorts. It isn't deliberate. "Not hardly. We tried dating, but we suck at it. And she's kind of a bitch."

Dr. Berry grins instead of reprimanding him for calling a girl a bitch. Puck tries to watch what he says in front of the dude, but the fact that he doesn't ever make Puck feel like he's done anything wrong makes it really easy to say whatever he wants. Sometimes shit slips.

"What about Finn?"

Puck takes a slow breath. It's the first time that name's come up since they talked about football all those weeks ago. "Finn and I aren't friends any more," he says simply after a moment.

"Because of what happened with his girlfriend?"

"And the fact that she lied to him about being the dad for like, four months." It's stupid, because he should know better by now, but he's surprised that Dr. Berry doesn't really react to this piece of information.

"And you went along with it?" Puck nods. "Who told Finn the truth?"

"Me."

"Why did you wait so long?"

"She wanted Finn to be the father instead of me. He fell for it because he didn't think she would have cheated on him or whatever." Puck tells Dr. Berry the story in as few words as possible. How Finn was stupid enough to believe that he knocked up his girlfriend because he came in the hot tub. How she lived with the Hudsons after her dad threw her out. How Puck got pissed off and totally fucked their friendship when he called Finn out for being a moron and believing her hot tub story and admitted that he was the father one day at basketball practice.

Puck doesn't know why he's talking about this. He doesn't _want_ to. At least, he didn't think that he did. But once he starts, the words just keep falling out of his mouth, and Dr. Berry listens without asking any questions or, really, reacting at all, even though Puck is well aware that this entire story is fucking stupid. Finn was stupid to believe it all, sure, but Puck was a stupid asshole to go along with it, and Quinn was a stupid fucking bitch for doing that to the two of them in the first place.

"What happened to the girl after you told Finn the truth?"

Puck blinks at Dr. Berry when he finally speaks.

"You said she was living with Finn because her parents kicked her out."

Puck realizes that he hasn't said Quinn's name once in all of this. It seems right somehow. "She moved in with us," he answers. "Finn's mom would have let her stay, but I guess she actually does have some shame."

Dr. Berry's mouth twitches, and all at once, Puck is finished with the conversation. It's one thing to talk about how his friendship with Finn ended, but it's another to talk about what it was like to have Quinn living with him, sharing his bed because they didn't have a spare room and his mom figured that she couldn't get more pregnant, spending all this time with this girl who legitimately hated him for ruining her life even though she had her own hand right in the middle of all that.

And talking about Quinn will lead to talking about the baby, which he definitely doesn't want to do.

"Do you think-"

The timer beeps then, cutting off Dr. Berry in mid-sentence and saving Puck, thankfully, from whatever the guy was going to say.

"I guess that's all for today," Dr. Berry says, leaning forward to set his pad on the coffee table when Puck stands up. "I'll see you next week, Noah."

It's weird, probably, the way that Puck feels like he just got out of something when he's walking around the side of the Berry house to his mother's car idling at the curb.

* * *

><p>Puck isn't even looking for her when he sees it happen.<p>

He's just walking down the hallway, going from English to the locker room to dress out for weights. Rachel's standing in front of the bulletin board outside the auditorium, reading something posted there, and Puck thinks that he might stop and see if he can make her laugh the way she did the last time they talked on the phone, sort of breathless after he said something that was only a little dirty.

He's just a few steps away from her when Karofsky tosses the slushie in her face. The guy doesn't even slow down, tossing the empty cup towards the trash can in the corner when he rounds it. It makes a hollow, plastic sound when it hits the floor instead.

The hallway is quiet for just a second, and then the hum of voices comes back. No one makes any moves toward where Rachel is standing stock still. Her back is to Puck, but he can see the slushie dripping off of her, landing in the orange puddle at her feet.

Rachel flinches when he sets his hand on her back. Her eyes are wide when she looks up at him, sticky liquid dripping off her eyelashes when she blinks rapidly.

He's never stuck around for the aftermath of someone being slushied before. He's never even thought about it, not really. His shoes squeak on the floor when he starts leading Rachel to the bathroom. She freezes right outside the door, not moving even when he pushes it open for her.

"Go away, Noah," she whispers, not meeting his eyes.

He just shakes his head, wrapping his fingers around her upper arm and leading her into the bathroom, not caring that it's the girls' bathroom and there are a pair of Cheerios standing in front of a mirror adjusting their stupid ponytails. He ignores the way that they giggle at his presence before they leave.

He doesn't really know what to do, so he just stands there next to the sink when Rachel reaches for a paper towel and smooths it over her face, removing the bulk of the moisture.

"Are you okay?" he finally asks.

She glances up at him, her fingers going to unbutton the light pink cardigan sweater she's wearing, now stained with large spots of orange syrup. She's wearing a black tank top underneath with skinny little straps and lace at the top, and he can see the black straps of her bra. She drops the sweater in the next sink, then starts pushing at her hair, separating the strands that have slushie in them from the parts that don't. She doesn't say anything until after the warning bell for the next class has rung and Puck just keeps standing beside her, watching her lean over the sink and hold pieces of her hair under the running water.

"What are you still doing here?" she finally asks, reaching back and twisting the elastic on her wrist around her hair until it's gathered at the nape of her neck in a messy knot. She shakes her head a little when he doesn't answer. "Go away, Noah," she repeats quietly, tearing off another paper towel and holding it under the still-running faucet.

He watches her reflection when she starts dabbing at her cheeks with the wet towel. "I'm sorry I ever did this to you." He says it quietly, and she meets his eyes in the mirror. He looks away, grabbing his own paper towel and getting it wet. "No one deserves this," he murmurs, rubbing the towel gently at a sticky spot he can see on her collarbone.

"Why did you?"

He just barely hears the question, she asks it so quietly, but it makes something twist in his stomach. "I can't remember," he answers honestly after a moment, his hand dropping to his side when he meets her eyes. He does remember the first few times he slushied her, how he could see the tears in her eyes when he stood in front her to see her reaction. After a while, he quit watching. Her eyes are dry now - have been the whole time - so he thinks that after a while, she probably stopped crying about it altogether.

She swallows thickly. "You should go to class." He blinks at her. "I just need to rinse out my sweater. You should go."

"Rachel."

"It's fine, Noah." She nods her head. "I'll talk to you later."

He could lie to Coach Beiste about why he's late. He has a million excuses filed away for situations like these (well, not exactly like these, but whatever), and since it's her first year, she hasn't already heard any of them. He doesn't even consider lying though, telling her straight off the truth about where he was.

The fact that she doesn't know that he used to be one of the guys who slushied Rachel is probably why she doesn't count him tardy.

* * *

><p>Puck finds Karofsky in the locker room after school, pulling old, disgusting clothes out of his gym locker because Coach Beiste got on his ass about not taking home the dirty stuff to be washed. It's just a stroke of luck that the only other people in the locker room are Mike Chang and the new kid, Sam whoever. He puts his hand on Karofsky's shoulder and shoves him around until his back hits hard against the bank of lockers.<p>

"The fuck's your problem, Puckerman?"

"Leave Berry alone," he growls, pushing his forearm against Karofsky's chest when the guy tries to move.

"Who?"

"The girl you slushied this morning. Don't pull that shit on her any more, or I'll break your fucking face."

Karofsky scoffs, though his face starts to go a little red when Puck lets his forearm slide up and press against the guy's throat. "Whatever, dude. You're neutered. You'll go back to juvie."

Puck pushes his forearm harder against Karofsky's throat. Maybe it's sick, but he likes the little gurgling noise that it makes. "Don't push me, Karofsky." He pushes away from him, taking a few steps backward toward the door.

"Fine, man," Karofsky says, his voice hoarse. "You want to fuck the freak, you go ahead. Leave me out of it."

His knuckles hurt when they connect with Karofsky's jaw, but it's a good, satisfying sort of hurt, like the way that your arms ache when you finish lifting or how your thighs burn after a run.

He can't take back all the shit that he and everyone else did to Rachel for two years, but he still has the power to make it stop. Puck has a reputation, and if you're good with Puck, you're good with everyone.

It's weird, but it feels good to use what he has to help someone out.

* * *

><p>He doesn't want to think about how he used to slushie Rachel or why, but it turns out that he can't help himself. No matter what he does to try to distract himself, he starts thinking about it. He eventually gives up on trying and just lets himself feel like shit for being a dick to this girl for what can't have been a good reason. He'd chalk it up to just being a prick - because he was, and still is most of the time, even if he's backed off on a lot of that shit - but he's pretty sure that there was a reason behind this one.<p>

When he finally does remember what got him started tossing slushies in her face, he feels even worse.

He calls her, even though it's nearly 10:30 and they have school tomorrow. Rachel definitely strikes him as an early-to-bed sort of chick. And if his mom knew that he was talking on the phone this late on a school night, she'd be pissed, but whatever.

"Hello?"

He can tell that she was asleep when she answers. Fortunately, he already feels like an asshole, so he can't feel much worse. "I remember why I started tossing slushies at you," he says instead of greeting her like a normal person.

"Oh." She pauses, and he hears something that sounds like a yawn. "And you had to tell me now?"

"Yeah. Sorry." She makes a noncommittal noise. "It's just...it was Quinn."

She takes a breath. "Quinn."

"Look, I don't know what her problem is with you. I don't know what the fuck her problem is in general," he corrects, because he can't figure that out either, and he's definitely tried. "But she said something about wishing that someone would put you in your place, and I was trying to get her attention or whatever, and I'd been a party where some girl threw a slushie with vodka in it on her boyfriend when she found out that he'd been cheating, and since that was funny, I thought Quinn would think it was funny if I did it to you."

He says it all in a rush, then holds his breath while he waits to hear what she has to say. It takes her a second.

"I guess it worked. Quinn thought it was funny, and then she had your baby."

The words sting, but not because they're true. "It didn't work, because she got together with Finn. What happened...that was different," he finishes lamely.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to say to this, Noah," she says after a long moment.

"Nothing, I guess. But I really am sorry that I ever did it."

He meant it when he apologized to her today in the bathroom, but now that he remembers why this all started, it's even more true. He only knew Rachel's name because Quinn told him, and he did this horrible thing to her over and over again to impress Quinn, who, in the grand scheme of things, didn't give a fuck. It's just another example of how she used him, how he let her use him.

It makes him feel like a pussy and a tool all at the same time, which is fucked.

"I forgive you, Noah."

She says the words so quietly that he almost doesn't hear them. "Why?" he asks before he can stop himself.

"Why?" she repeats.

"I was a total asshole to you, and you still agreed to tutor me. You should hate me."

"I think everyone deserves a second chance," she whispers.

* * *

><p>"What made you think that attempting to steal an ATM was a good idea, Noah?"<p>

It's the first question that Dr. Berry asks at Puck's appointment, and it catches him off guard. Usually he eases in with questions about school or sports or whatever. Puck's pretty sure that this question isn't coming just because football season has ended.

"I didn't." Dr. Berry raises his eyebrows. "I didn't think anything before I did it. I just...did it," Puck finishes lamely.

Dr. Berry looks at him thoughtfully. "What do you think about it now?" He shrugs at Puck's questioning look. "You've had the opportunity to get a little distance, a little perspective. You've suffered the consequences of your actions, and I think you're thoughtful enough, now, to have considered why you did what you did." He tilts his head. "So what do you think now?"

He has thought about it. At juvie, when he wasn't thinking about how much the place sucked, he thought about what landed him there and why he'd been such a dumbass. But he hasn't ever talked about it, even though his mom and his PO have both asked him why. What he says here stays here though, and he hasn't ever felt like Dr. Berry was judging him or thinking about how stupid he was.

Basically, if he's going to talk about this shit, he might as well do it here, right?

Puck takes a deep breath before he opens his mouth. "I think I was just pissed off that everyone was acting like everything was supposed to be the way it was before."

"Before?"

"Before the baby." The words don't hurt the way he expected them to.

"How do you mean?"

"Everyone just pretended like she never happened. Like, we gave her away so she could have a real life instead of being stuck with teenage parents who hated each other, and it was like I was supposed to forget that she ever existed."

Dr. Berry makes a note on his pad. "Did your mother do that?"

Puck shakes his head. His mother is never, ever going to let him forget that he fucked up the way that he did. He knows that she still loves him and she's not like, actively pissed off at him for that particular thing any more, but she's never going to let him _forget_. She may have let him run around and do basically whatever he wanted before everything happened, but now she's got shit locked down. And more than that, she's not going to let him forget that he's a father who did right by his kid, unlike his own dad.

"Who is everyone, Noah?"

He's been avoiding having this conversation since he first started coming here. He's been avoiding even saying her name. But now that he's said what he has, it feels stupid not to say everything.

"It was mostly Quinn," he admits.

"The mother." Puck nods. "She pretended like it never happened."

"I left her alone all summer," Puck says. "I was still all messed up about everything, so I figured she was, too. And then school started, and she was a cheerleader again, and she was back with Finn, and it was like nothing ever happened."

"Do you want her to talk about it?" Dr. Berry asks.

Puck considers the question. Honestly, if Quinn had come up to him and wanted to talk about the baby every day, that probably would have made him crazy. "I don't know," he finally says. "I didn't want her to pretend like nothing happened at all. And that's exactly what she did. I don't even know how the hell she got Finn to go out with her again, but like, it was all exactly the same as last year. It's messed up."

"How did you get from being upset about Quinn to attaching your mother's car to an ATM and trying to drive away with it?"

Puck snorts. It's kind of funny when you say it that way, though the look on Dr. Berry's face is totally neutral, so maybe it's not funny at all. "I don't know. Don't shrinks usually call stuff like this lashing out?" He shrugs when Dr. Berry quirks an eyebrow. "That's what the guidance counselor said about me flooding the bathrooms in middle school."

Dr. Berry chuckles. "The idea is to figure out why you lashed out. What triggered it." He tilts his head. "Do you remember what happened that day?"

Puck doesn't have to think too hard. "I ran into Quinn. Like, I actually ran into her after practice and almost knocked her down. She didn't say a word. The old Quinn, back before all the stuff happened between us, would have been all mad about it and said something bitchy. But she didn't say anything."

"You wanted some sort of acknowledgement," Dr. Berry offers gently. Puck nods because the dude is totally right. Puck grins when he says, "And so you...lashed out."

Puck thinks, not for the first time, that if he has to talk to a shrink, Dr. Berry isn't a bad guy to deal with.

* * *

><p>"So are you going to help me study for our history final?" Puck asks Rachel, leaning against the locker next to hers before what he knows is her free period. Sure, he could have brought it up on the phone when he called her last night, but then he wouldn't have gotten to see the little look she's giving him, like she knows that there'll be just as much making out as there will be studying if she agrees.<p>

(They've been talking on the phone some along with their texting, because he's realized that it's a lot better to hear some of the things that she says in her voice than just to read them. She has a good voice, okay? She's kind of fucking adorable and way less annoying than most of the girls who try to talk to him on the phone, though he probably wouldn't just come out and admit that he likes talking to her like that.)

"It's all review, Noah. You've done well enough on your tests that you shouldn't have to study too much for the final," she points out, pushing at the books in her locker without actually moving anything. It's like he's making her nervous.

He likes it.

"Yeah, but I missed stuff when I was at juvie, and all of that is on the final, too," he reminds her. It isn't just a line. Going over all of that with someone who was actually there will be helpful, and Rachel's notes are crazy-detailed to the point that if he could skip class and just read her notes, he would. He wouldn't be missing anything.

"Okay," she agrees, shaking her head when he smirks. "Saturday afternoon, like before?"

He winks at her instead of answering, pushing off the lockers and walking down the hall before she can say anything else.

They haven't been alone together since the last time that she helped him study, which was more than a couple of weeks ago. It's been that long since he's made out with anyone. It would have been unheard of for him a year ago, but he was actually faithful to Quinn the whole time that she was living at his house, and she sure as fuck wasn't letting him touch her. Besides, this flirting thing he has going with Rachel is actually fun. Who knew that you could do things this slowly with someone and have _fun_ instead of just being annoyed?

She's wearing jeans when he opens the front door to let her in on Saturday afternoon, which he decides she needs to do more often as soon as she takes off her coat and he sees her ass. The skirts are awesome, but the way that the denim hugs her curves, well...

It's good, okay?

And listen, he hasn't worked this hard for the last half of the semester to lose it all on the final just because he wasn't around for everything. Sure, this studying thing started as a ploy to spend some time with Rachel - one that worked really well - but if he can ace this final, he'll pull an A in this class. And he wants that A. It's the first time he's cared about his grades for their own sake.

The thing is, after they've studied all the stuff that he missed, they get into the stuff that he studied with her before, the stuff that he still remembers and really just needs to quickly review to be sure that nothing on the final exam surprises him. That's when he starts losing focus.

Rachel is distracting.

She's sitting in his desk chair, facing where he's leaned back against the headboard on his bed, her legs folded up Indian-style and her notebook, perfectly organized and color-coded and highlighted, balanced in her lap. Her feet are bare, her toenails polished dark purple, and she's got her hair pushed over one shoulder as she bows her head over her notebook, the ends of it curling and brushing against her tit.

How is he supposed to give a fuck about Martin Luther when he has Rachel Berry in his bedroom?

"Can we take a break?" he asks abruptly. He just caught sight of the charm on her necklace, hidden just beneath the edge of her blue sweater, and he can tell that it isn't the _XO_ she usually wears.

He needs to know what's on her necklace.

She shoots him a look from under her eyelashes that he thinks is supposed to be a warning, but instead is just fucking hot and makes him want to lay her back on his bed and see how she looks at him when he's got his head between her thighs. "Noah."

"Please?" He grins triumphantly when she sighs, turning to set her notebook carefully on his desk. "C'mere."

He pushes her back against the pillows as soon as she's on the bed, nipping at her lips and making her giggle. He curves his hand around her waist over her sweater and shakes his head. "You're fuckin' cute, you know that?"

She bites the corner of her bottom lip and nods, which just totally proves his point and makes him have to kiss her again. She makes this little sound against his lips when he brings his hand up to her neck, his fingers brushing against her skin while he tries to find the chain of her necklace so he can tug it from beneath her sweater. It distracts him from the task at hand, because now he has to see if she'll make the same noise when he puts his lips on the skin there.

She totally does.

"It's a star," he says when he finally gets around to looking at the necklace. (It takes a while. He thought she made good noises when he kissed her neck, but then his lips brushed against her earlobe, and...well. It turns out that the noises are even better when he focuses his attention there.)

"What?" Her eyes are dark when she blinks up at him, and she shivers when he traces the tip of his finger along the delicate gold chain. "Oh." He kisses her collarbone, and she pushes her hand into the hair at the back of his head. "_Oh_."

She shifts her hips, and it makes him wish that he was on top of her, between her thighs, so he could press against her and feel the way she moves. Instead, he pushes his hand under her sweater at her side, her skin smooth and hot against his palm.

"Noah, wait," she breathes out when he starts skimming his hand up her ribs. He stops moving his hand, thinking that's what she means, but keeps moving his lips along her jaw until she says it again.

He pulls back a little to look down at her. Her lips are all red, and he has to resist the urge to kiss them again. "What's wrong, baby?"

She takes a deep breath and blinks her eyes. "What are we doing?"

"Uh."

"No, I know what this is," she says, saving him from saying something stupid. "But I mean...what does it mean?"

There it is.

This is what he always dreads when he's hanging out with chicks, the part when they try to make it about something more than just making out and feeling good, wanting him to be their boyfriend or whatever.

(It's weird, but he doesn't feel the urge to kick Rachel off his bed like he has with other girls.)

"I'm not like the other girls," she whispers when he doesn't say anything. "I can't...Do you like me, Noah?"

It's probably the wrong thing to do, but the way that her voice sounds when she asks makes him squeeze her hip and press himself a little closer to her. "Yeah." He meets her eyes and nods his head. "I really do."

"Do you..." She trails off, pressing her lips together. "Do you like anyone else?"

_Are you doing this with anyone else?_ He knows this game, but somehow, it's cute when Rachel does it instead of annoying. She isn't just playing coy; she's actually shy about this.

It feels pretty good to be able to tell her the truth. "No."

"Okay." He watches her eyes when she looks at his lips. "Can you kiss me some more?"

He wraps his arm around her waist and rolls them quickly so she's on top of him. "You kiss me," he tells her when she stops giggling.


	4. Chapter 4

He doesn't start feeling guilty about this thing he has going on with Rachel until he's in his mom's car on his way to his next appointment with Dr. Berry.

He isn't her boyfriend, which was her idea. She said that she could tell that he wasn't ready for that kind of commitment, and she didn't want to push him too far, too fast, so they should just _keep things casual_. It's kind of a trip, that this girl is this cool.

What's freaking him out a little though is thinking that he could probably go ahead and be her boyfriend. She's basically the sweetest girl, and she's so fucking sexy that he can barely stand it. It's not just that though. It's that he actually really likes talking to her. He's told her more about himself in the last two weeks than he's told anyone in years. He thinks it's because he can tell that she's really _listening_ instead of just waiting for him to finish talking so she can have her turn.

He's walking around the side of the Berry house when it occurs to him that maybe being a good listener is a family trait.

"I was an asshole to a really sweet girl because of Quinn."

That's what Puck says when Dr. Berry asks him how his finals went, because it's the only thing he's been able to think about all afternoon. If it surprises the doctor, he doesn't show it.

"How do you mean?"

"Quinn didn't like her," he says, deliberately not using Rachel's name. "So I started picking on her. And then everyone else did it. And I'm just now realizing that me being a dick made high school suck for her."

Rachel hasn't said that in so many words, but Puck isn't stupid. He has some idea of what school must be like for her - or what it was like, because he knows that people are leaving her alone now that they know that he's cool with her or whatever - and he knows it wasn't good.

"Would you say that you were trying to prove something to Quinn?"

Puck shrugs. "Maybe."

"How'd that work out for you?" he deadpans, grinning when Puck rolls his eyes. "What was it about her? What made you want her even after she was with Finn, enough that you were willing to betray your friendship with him?"

Puck considers the question. It isn't the first time he's been asked this, but he's never really tried to give someone a serious answer. "She always acted like she was perfect or whatever, but when I got her alone...she wasn't. Like, she acted like this perfect Christian cheerleader girl, but she's kind of a bitch, and she worries about being fat." He stops talking, because none of this is answering the question. "I don't know why," he finally admits. "But I wanted her enough that I didn't even think about Finn."

It's fucking frustrating, not being able to figure out why he wanted her so bad when he's _trying_ to figure it out. It's one thing to ignore your motives for doing shit, but it's really not okay when you don't know them at all.

"It's okay not to know," Dr. Berry says gently after a moment. "That's part of what therapy is for."

Puck rolls his eyes. "I never wanted to figure this shit out."

Dr. Berry actually laughs. "I know, Noah."

* * *

><p>When his mom gets his report card and sees how much he's pulled up his grades since he got out of juvie, she gives back the keys to his truck, though she doesn't give him free reign. He has to tell her where he's going before he leaves, always, and parties are totally out of the question. It boils down to letting him drive himself to and from school once winter break ends, but that's good enough for him. It's better than nothing, right?<p>

He goes out on Saturday afternoon to go to the coffee place downtown for a peppermint mocha. It's not coffee, no, but that shit's delicious, and fuck anyone who wants to give him shit about it.

He doesn't expect to walk through the door of the place and see Quinn standing there at the counter.

It's annoying, really, how someone who's such a fucking mess can still be so pretty, but he can't deny that it's true when she's standing there in a white (of course) wool coat with a blue bag on her arm and her hair in the soft curls she always got mad at him for trying to touch. She just blinks her big green eyes at him when he walks up to the counter and places his order.

"I heard that you're trying to defile Manhands," she murmurs meanly when he slides away from the register to let the guy behind him order. She gazes straight ahead.

"Fuck off, Quinn."

"It's cute, really, the loser and the freak," she goes on, acting like she didn't hear him, still not looking at him. "She's just another girl who's too good for you though. She actually will go somewhere, but you're going to be stuck here forever."

The barista calls her name, setting her drink on the counter, but Puck grabs her by her upper arm before she can move, leaning down until he's close enough that her hair tickles his lips when he speaks into her ear. "Are you still crying yourself to sleep every night, or have you managed to forget that you had a baby and gave her away?"

She wrenches her arm away from him, a broken little gasp falling from her lips, and practically runs out of the shop, leaving her drink there on the counter.

Saying what he said makes him just about the worst guy on the planet, he knows, but the mean part of him feels good about it. He never, ever let on that he heard her doing that, crying herself to sleep, even though he can't think of a night when that wasn't what she did. You can't miss someone crying when you're sharing a bed with her. It's a low blow, sure, but at least now he knows that she hasn't completely forgotten about everything that happened last year. And besides, she's the one who started it this time with her comment about Rachel.

(The part of him that tried to make a relationship with her work for the sake of their kid, the part of him that kind of loved her, feels like a rat bastard.)

Puck liked it better when she pretended that he didn't exist.

* * *

><p>"We should go do something. Oh! Ice skating!"<p>

He laughs because Rachel says it out of the middle of nowhere when they're talking on the phone one afternoon during winter break. She was just talking about gingerbread houses and whether they should be decorated with traditional candies or whatever else.

"What?"

"Well, neither of us is doing anything," she points out. "We might as well go somewhere and do something together."

"Ice skating?" he asks dubiously. He can really only get behind ice skating when pucks and sticks and hitting people are involved.

"We don't have to go ice skating," she laughs. "We could see a movie or wander around the mall or something else."

Puck glances at the clock on his bedside table and considers whether or not his mom will actually let him go out and do something with Rachel. She knows that the girl was tutoring him, and they met the last time Rachel was over. She was coming in when Abby and his mom were heading out, so it was sort of a _'hello, goodbye'_ thing, but he knows that Rachel made a good first impression.

The idea of sitting with Rachel is a dark theater is really appealing, too.

They meet at the theater downtown because she suggests it, one of those places where they play movies that are usually already out on DVD but only charge like, two bucks for tickets. Rachel is standing in the lobby with her red wool coat draped over her arm and her hair tumbling over her shoulders in these loose curls that he loves.

Now that he's really looking at her all the time, he wonders how he didn't see her sooner. She isn't hot in the obvious way, like Brittany, or sexy like Santana, or even traditionally beautiful like Quinn, but she's still really, really pretty and like, sneaky hot on top of it. She's one of those girls you don't realize you're mentally undressing until she's totally naked in your mind and you aren't sure how she got that way.

But it's a fucking good image.

(He's had his hands on her a little bit, and he knows that what's going on under her clothes is pretty good. He's a dude; he's gonna think about it.)

"The only thing playing any time soon is the one with Will Ferrell," she says when he walks up to her, "so I already bought tickets. I wasn't sure about your stance on popcorn versus candy, so I haven't gotten anything yet."

She looks sort of offended when he starts laughing instead of saying anything, but he just takes her hand and laces his fingers with hers so he can lead her toward the concession stand. "What's your stance on popcorn versus candy, Rach?"

She shakes her head at him a little, but she's smiling. "I like SweeTarts, and if you let me, I'll eat the whole box myself," she answers.

Puck buys a box of SweeTarts for Rachel and Junior Mints for himself, the candy that his nana always bought for them to share when he was little and she would take him for movies when she babysat. Rachel smiles like he said something sweet when he tells her that, and she loops her arm through his once he's tucked his wallet back into his pocket and they're walking to their theater.

There are only a handful of other people in the theater, which figures since it's a weeknight and they're seeing a movie that they could probably watch on Netflix instant already. Now, put Puck in a nearly-empty theater with most girls, and he's going to see how far he can push them. Like the time he and Santana cut last period freshman year and snuck into a matinee of some stupid movie and he convinced her to go down on him. He's pretty sure the best he could do with Rachel is making out, and he'd have to work her into it.

The movie is already completely stupid just ten minutes in, so Puck slips his box of candy into the coat of his letter jacket and decides that he'll wait until Rachel gives up on her own candy to start running some game on her.

Five minutes later, she leans close to his ear. "This is incredibly stupid," she whispers.

Puck snickers, which sets her off into a fit of giggles, and then neither of them can stop cracking up even though there isn't anything funny happening on the screen and, in this movie, probably never will be.

"Can we go?" Rachel asks after they manage to get themselves under control, her breath fanning out over his ear and making him think of all the other things they could be doing.

He doesn't bother answering her. He figures grabbing her wrist and tugging her out of her seat is answer enough.

She climbs into the passenger seat of his truck when he suggests that they find something else to do instead of just going home. She has her seat belt on before he even gets the truck started, and then she's reaching for the radio when Bruno Mars comes blaring through the speakers. "He's terrible," she tells him seriously, punching the preset buttons until she finds a station playing some classic rock.

Puck just laughs, and his fingers brush over the ends of her hair when he puts his hand on the back of the seat when he turns to back out of the parking space.

There isn't really anywhere to go in Lima, so they end up just driving around, talking about whatever comes up while Rachel works her way through the rest of her box of SweeTarts. (_"Please, Noah, take them away." "If you like 'em, eat 'em, baby."_) Rachel does most of the talking while Puck guides his truck out of town, cruising along the back roads that he learned driving around Finn and the guys because he was the first one to get his license. He's used to rocking out on these roads and listening to Matt Rutherford giggle like a girl because that's what he does when he's had more than three beers, but listening to Rachel talk is better.

She talks about celebrating Christmas with her daddy's family, saying that she really loves the music even if she is a Jew. (_"I don't mind singing about the birth of a savior, even if I don't believe that's what he was."_) She tells him that she intends to look for a teacher willing to serve as faculty advisor for a spring musical ("Phantom of the Opera _would be ideal, but I doubt it would be approved for McKinley, so I would settle for_ West Side Story.") because she needs to have a lead role in a musical on her resume if she intends to get into a good performing arts program after high school. She mentions getting roped into running her temple's bake sale, but that she's actually looking forward to spending an afternoon with Tina, the other girl who's doing it.

"I won't be offended if you ask me to stop talking," she finally says. She's shaking the last of the SweeTarts into her hand when he glances over at her. "I tend to run off at the mouth when people let me."

"I like listening to you talk," Puck admits, slowing the truck so he can turn off onto a gravel road. He knows there's a driveway out here that leads to some guy's corn field or whatever where they can park. Even though it's been a while since he's driven around like this, Puck isn't too keen on wasting all of his gas in one night. That shit's not cheap.

"Really?" Rachel asks dubiously. "I'm not annoying you?"

"Rachel, if you were annoying me, I'd take you back to your car," Puck tells her honestly. He would, too. Instead, he finds the driveway he was looking for and turns in, parking the truck and killing the engine, though he keeps the key turned so that the radio plays quietly in the background the way it has been all night. He shrugs when he sees the way Rachel is looking at him, her eyes wide in the glow of the lights on the dash. "We were wasting gas. You don't mind, do you?"

She shakes her head a little. "No. I think it's your turn to talk though," she says, unbuckling her seat belt and turning to face him, pulling one leg up into the seat. He checks to see if her skirt falls to cover her, even though she's wearing tights. It's habit, okay?

"I don't have anything to say."

"I don't believe that for a second, Noah."

"Uh."

"What's the most interesting thing to happen to you since break started?" she prompts, brushing her bangs out of her eyes.

"I ran into Quinn the other day."

It just falls out of his mouth, honestly, and the second it does, he wishes that he hadn't said it.

"Oh." Rachel swallows, then smiles wryly. "How is she?"

"Fucked up," he answers flatly. "My life would be easier if I never had to see her."

With the exception of that one time, they haven't ever talked about Quinn. Puck doesn't like to talk about her, frankly, and it isn't like he has any reason to with Rachel. But since he just opened his stupid mouth, that's apparently about to change.

Rachel is quiet for a minute, then she takes a deep breath and meets his eyes. "Did you love her?"

The only other person who has ever asked Puck if he loved Quinn was Quinn, and the question surprises him now just as much as it did when she asked it. Now though, his perspective on the whole thing is a lot different, with time and distance and all of the shit that he's kind of figured out with Dr. Berry. It probably makes sense, somehow, that this would come up with Rachel. Really, Quinn gets at least a little bit of credit for all the stuff that's happened with Rachel in the last few months; she set all of this in motion two years ago when she told Puck how much she hated _"Rachel freaking Berry"_.

"I thought I did," he says after a moment. "Now I think it was the whole having-my-baby thing. I liked the person she was in my head more than the person she actually was, you know?"

"You idealized her," Rachel says quietly, the corners of her mouth turning up when he nods. "I can relate. I did that with Finn, when we wre still trying to make glee club work. Until he found out that she was pregnant and it all fell apart, I just pretended that she didn't exist and ignored the fact that he shouldn't have been flirting with me at all. It was all built on a fantasy."

It occurs to Puck that if he hadn't gone along with Quinn lying about who the father was, Finn and Rachel could have had a chance to make things work. He remembers seeing the way that Finn looked at her when they were singing together, like she was the only other person in the room; the dude always did have a shitty poker face. It's just another way that he fucked Finn over when he went along with Quinn's lie.

"I think I learned a valuable lesson from all of that though," Rachel goes on, sliding across the bench seat so she's sitting in the middle, close enough that she can put her hand on the back of the seat next to his shoulder. "If someone isn't willing to be with you all the way, they probably don't deserve to have you at all."

The way she says it, it makes it sound like Quinn isn't good enough for him (and Finn isn't good enough for Rachel) instead of the other way around, which is the way that it always felt. It's kind of awesome to know that there's someone who thinks that he's too good for Quinn, because for the last year, everyone's been looking at him like it was all his fault, like he ruined her life and she wasn't responsible for any of what happened between them.

There's something about the Berrys that helps him figure his shit out, and he thinks, not for the first time, that he'd like to come clean and tell her that he's in therapy, which would lead to telling her that her dad is his doctor. The fact that her dad knows about a lot of the awful shit that Puck's done in the past isn't likely to work in his favor if they start officially dating or something, but it is what it is. If his doctor wasn't her dad, he's almost positive that he would have told her about it already.

"You're kind of awesome," he tells her after a minute, mostly because he doesn't know what else to say. Puck's therapy sessions with her dad aren't the right thing to bring up now. It's totally true though, and the sweetest little smile spreads across her lips.

"You aren't so bad yourself," she quips.

She leans into his touch when he curves his hand around the side of her neck, his thumb brushing over her earlobe when he kisses her, just sipping at her lips until she makes an impatient noise and pulls away. "I've been waiting for you to do that," she murmurs, peering up at him from under her eyelashes, her hand slipping under his coat to press against his chest. "Please don't tease me."

"Fuck, baby."

She mewls into his mouth when he kisses her again, her fingers curling into his tee shirt when he nips at her bottom lip, and before long, he's pulling her into his lap and unbuttoning her coat so he can get closer to her. He can't take the coat off though, because it's December in Ohio, and even with the heater running in the truck, it's too cold to start taking off clothes unless they're both going to take off all of them.

They're completely stupid for doing it where they do, but they spend nearly an hour like that, making out and talking a little. (Puck's basically torturing himself, because the way that she curls her tongue around his shoots straight to his cock, and he knows _that_ isn't happening here tonight. It's worth it though.) They don't leave until they have to go so he doesn't miss his curfew.

Rachel sits in the middle seat for the drive back to town. She has her hand on his leg, her fingertips brushing over the seam of his jeans at the inside of his thigh, keeping him half-crazy even though he knows she doesn't know it.

* * *

><p>Puck is walking along the path at the side of the Berrys' house, his head ducked in a mostly failed attempt to protect his ears from the icy wind when he hears someone coming up behind him.<p>

"Noah," Dr. Berry says, around the corner and rubbing his hands together briskly. He's wearing a sweater, but no coat, which seems really stupid. "Follow me," he instructs, jerking his head back towards the front of the house and turning without waiting for Puck's answer.

"What's going on?" Puck asks when the doctor leads him up the steps onto the front porch.

"The snow caused a bit of damage to the roof of my office, and now it is cold and wet in there," he answers, wiping his feet on the mat just inside the door and closing it behind Puck while he does the same. "We'll have to meet in here until I can get it fixed."

Dr. Berry leads him through the house to a little room with an upright piano and walls that are lined with bookshelves. Puck looks around while he settles into a yellow armchair, squinting a little in an effort to read the title of the sheet music on the piano.

"So what's new with you this week?" Dr. Berry asks once he's gotten all of his own stuff sorted out and is sitting in a chair that matches the one Puck's in. Just like always, there's a yellow legal pad in his lap and a Bic pen in his hand.

Puck doesn't generally spend time outside of therapy thinking about what happens when he's here. He comes because he has to, not because he wants to, so it's not like he's sitting at home coming up with different things he wants to talk about or discuss or whatever with Dr. Berry. He shows up and answers questions and lets the conversation go wherever it (or Dr. Berry, he guesses) wants to. This week though, he's actually been thinking about something for more than a couple of days.

"I think I realized something," he tells Dr. Berry, who just raises his eyebrows questioningly. "You know how I tried to like, convince Quinn that I wasn't a loser, but it never mattered what I did, I wasn't good enough? And nothing ever changed?" Dr. Berry nods, setting his pen down and watching Puck closely. "So when we were together, it was just because she was pregnant and she was supposed to be with her baby daddy. She was never _with_ me. And that sucks."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, if she didn't to be with the dude that I was, she shouldn't have been with me at all, baby or not, right?"

When he told Dr. Berry he realized something, he meant that Rachel pointed it out to him, but whatever. It counts no matter how he got there.

"So, what does that mean?"

"It means Quinn sucks," Puck answers seriously, watching the way that Dr. Berry struggles not to laugh. "But I don't want to be with someone like that any more, where shit doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean or whatever."

"You want to have a relationship that's more...authentic, maybe?" Dr. Berry suggests.

Puck shrugs. That seems a little heavy for his junior year of high school, but he likes Rachel. "There's this girl, and we started out as barely friends, but I really like her," he admits. "And I think she might like me. And it feels good." It feels better than it ever did with Santana or Quinn or whoever else, really, this thing he's got going on with Rachel.

It's probably weird that he's admitting it to her dad before he tells her, but whatever. This whole thing is a little weird. He hasn't figured out how to tell either Rachel or Dr. Berry about his relationship with the other without it all blowing up somehow.

He'd like to think of something, because the other thing that he's figured out in the last couple of days is that he really _likes_ Rachel, enough to want to see if they could really be together.

Dr. Berry smiles and picks up his pen again. "I think that sounds great."

"I ran into Quinn, too," Puck says before Dr. Berry can ask a question. If he's going to start volunteering information like that, he might as well admit to being a jackass to this girl and try to figure out if he's a complete douchebag for feeling a little bit good about knowing that she probably cried.

Okay, maybe this therapy stuff isn't complete bullshit.

He's shrugging into his coat just inside the front door after his session when he hears Rachel's voice ringing through the house and freezes for a moment before turning in time to see her coming down the stairs.

She falters just a bit when she sees him standing there, but then the corners of her mouth turn up. "Noah. What are you doing here?"

Fuck. "I had an appointment," he answers stupidly. "With your dad."

"Oh." She nods her head, her expression unchanging. "It's good to see you, but I have a voice lesson that I'm going to be late to if I don't leave right now, so..."

"Yeah. Okay. Later."

He stands there awkwardly in her front hallway when she steps out the door, closing it behind her.

This isn't the way that he wanted to tell her about this.

* * *

><p>He figures that Rachel finding out that he sees a shrink is going to be what ends this thing they've been doing. Sure, she's forgiven him for all the stuff that he used to do to her, and all the stuff that he knew about and encouraged. But...his shrink is her dad, and he's been seeing the guy for months without mentioning it once to Rachel.<p>

All of that probably wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't started hanging out with her to keep her from telling her dad what an asshole he was to her for the first half of high school.

He really fucked all of this up.

No, you know, making friends with her wasn't the fuck up. That, actually, worked out for the better, because Rachel is awesome. Too awesome. That's what caused the fuck up. If he hadn't gone and started to like, fall for her.

Shit.

He's totally fallen for her.

His timing on this realization totally sucks, too.


	5. Chapter 5

"Hi!" Rachel greets brightly when he finds her at her locker the next day after the last bell. He'd wanted to find her this morning, but it took him hours to fall asleep last night, and once he finally did, the alarm clock wasn't enough to wake him up and he was tardy for first hour.

He's been thinking about what he would do if he found out that the girl he was dating was seeing a shrink. Now, he thinks he'd probably just shrug and ignore it, but a few months ago, before he was in court-ordered counseling himself? He probably would have cut and run, convinced that she was full of crazy that was going to come out sooner or later. He's pretty sure that Rachel is going to have a more open view of therapy in general, since her dad is a doctor and all that, but that's part of the problem, too.

Rachel's dad knows a whole bunch of his deep, dirty secrets.

He's wary of her good mood. "Hey." He doesn't really want to bring up yesterday, but he's pretty sure that putting it off is a bad idea. "How was your lesson?"

"It was good," she answers, pulling open the metal door of her locker and setting her French book inside. "We've been working on songs from _West Side Story_ for a while, and I think I've perfected 'I Have a Love.'"

He blinks at her.

"I also finished my paper for AP English," she goes on, "even though it isn't due until Monday, which I'm feeling quite good about." She finishes slipping books into her backpack and smiles up at him. "I have to go change for ballet club, but I'll text you later?"

"Okay."

She wiggles her fingers in a wave before turning to walk down the hallway, leaving Puck there by her locker trying to figure out what just happened. Did she forget that he was standing at her front door yesterday after an appointment with her dad, the shrink? Or did she just blow him off with a totally sweet smile on her face?

It bugs him all afternoon, and he finds himself checking his phone obsessively, like having that stupid conversation with Rachel in the hallway made him grow a vagina or something. Seriously though, did Rachel Berry blow him off with an excuse about ballet and a wave? Is this her way of ending things and trying to let him down easy?

Rachel always texts when she says she's going to, so he figures that if she doesn't, that's his sign. Not long after dinner though, Puck gets a message that says something about a chorus line and pointy shoes that he cares about not at all. He's just happy that she's talking to him.

_your dad is my shrink_ Puck sends back, ignoring what she said. It's probably the definition of doing it the wrong way, but now he can say that he told her, right?

_I already knew, Noah._

"You already knew?"

Yeah, he called her as soon as he got the message.

"Of course I knew," she answers quietly.

"How?"

"That day you ran into me outside of the house. Maybe you didn't remember who I was then, but I certainly hadn't forgotten you." The way she says it, her voice soft and just a little bit guarded, makes him feel like an asshole. "And I've seen your truck parked down the block since your mother gave your keys back," she adds. So much for being covert. Fuck.

"You knew," he repeats, considering what it means. Maybe it just means that she doesn't care that he's in therapy. 'Why didn't you say something?"

"Why didn't you?" she counters softly. He hears her let out a little breath when he doesn't say anything. "I figured that if you were ready to talk about it, you would bring it up. And I know that the fact that your doctor is my father makes it a bit more complicated. I didn't want to make things uncomfortable between us."

"It's one of the terms of my probation," he says. It feels important that she knows that he isn't there by choice. "It doesn't bother you?"

"Of course not. Talking about things is healthy," she says seriously. "I used to speak with a therapist regularly."

"What did you talk about?" Puck asks, his mouth getting ahead of his brain. He wants to take it back immediately; he wouldn't want to tell Rachel everything he talks about, so it sucks of him to ask her. "I'm sorry," he says quickly. "You don't have to tell me."

He can hear the smile in her voice when she says, "It's fine, Noah. I started going to talk about my mother when I was eleven and it really clicked for the first time that I would never have a relationship with her. I've talked about growing up in Lima with gay, bi-racial fathers. I've talked about the things that happened at school."

She says the last part quietly, but the blow still lands and makes him feel like a prick.

"I don't know what your experience has been like," she goes on, "because Daddy certainly doesn't talk about his patients with us, but I think that talking helps."

"Yeah, you talk a lot, Rach," he teases, smiling to himself when she giggles. It's true, but as much as anything, he wants to break some of the tension they've got going right now. This conversation is fucking heavy.

"I thought about you during Mr. Simms' lecture today," she says, changing the subject. He's only half-listening when she starts talking about some French dude, thinking instead about how awesome she is for changing the subject when he was freaking out talking about therapy and hearing how throwing slushies at this girl probably sent her there.

* * *

><p>"Are you actually dating the creature from Munchkinland?"<p>

Puck doesn't even bother turning away from his lunch to glare at Santana. "Don't be a bitch."

"Seriously, Puck."

He does glare when she reaches over and snags a potato chip from his plate. "She's sweet, okay?" She stares at him blandly. "I like her."

"Is she your girlfriend, Noah?" she asks condescendingly, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Fuck off."

She rolls her eyes when he takes a huge bite of his sandwich. "Fine. You like her. Whatever." She reaches for his bottle of Coke and starts picking at the label. "Does she give good head?" Santana's watching him expectantly when he looks at her. "She has dick sucking lips, Puck. She looks like she'd be good at it."

He stares at her incredulously. "What is wrong with you?"

She smirks. "So serious, Noah." She stands up, leaning over and putting her lips right next to his ear. "Hundred bucks says she likes it, too," she whispers, turning on her heel and walking away before Puck can even look up at her.

As fucking twisted as she is though, he knows Santana, and this is her way of letting him know that she isn't going to be a bitch about it if he does get with Rachel for real.

It's kind of nice to know.

* * *

><p>"I think there's some stuff I need to tell you."<p>

Dr. Berry turns from where he's closing the door to look at Puck. They're still meeting inside the house instead of out in Dr. Berry's office, in the room with the piano. It's the first time that Puck has said something besides "hi" before Dr. Berry got a chance to ask a question.

"Okay, Noah." The man moves to the chair he sat in last week, gesturing for Puck to do the same. "What do you need to tell me?"

Puck takes a deep breath and sits up on the edge of the chair. "I've been getting to know Rachel for the last few months, and I really like her. Your daughter Rachel," he adds, just in case it isn't clear who he's talking about. (There are a lot of girls named Rachel.)

Puck has spent basically the entire week trying to figure out how to tell Dr. Berry that he's super into the guy's daughter. Saying it like this makes him sound like a tool, but he figured it was the least likely to make Dr. Berry throw Puck out on his ass and forbid Rachel to see him before he calls the PO and gets Puck sent back to the Mondale School for Boys.

He knows that's totally possible, too. Dr. Berry knows about all of the terrible shit that Puck's done in the last two years; he knows exactly how fucked up Puck is. Puck understands why the guy wouldn't want his daughter to be involved with him. Hell, technically, Puck has a daughter out there somewhere, and he hates the idea of her being with a dude like him someday, even if he isn't the one raising her. He has to come clean though. He's learned that the longer you let things fester, the worse it is when they come out.

"You like my daughter," Dr. Berry repeats. Puck nods. "Why?"

Puck considers the question for a second before he opens his mouth, but that's mostly just to remind himself not to tell Dr. Berry that his daughter is way hotter than Puck realized before. It's true, but it isn't the most important thing, and it's definitely not something to tell her dad. "I think she might be the nicest person I've ever known," he begins, "and she's smart and forgiving and really, really easy to talk to. Like, it's even easier to talk to her than it is to talk to you," he adds. He thinks it's encouraging that Dr. Berry smiles. He feels like he should say more, but he doesn't know how the hell to say it. "I'm not good with the words stuff, but I really do like her."

Dr. Berry just looks at him, his head tilted and his hands resting lightly on the arms of his chair. Puck feels all twitchy, sitting here and anticipating what the guy's going to say. Because whatever he says, things are going to be totally different by the time Puck leaves here today. He understood that when he started talking, but he's not finished yet, and it's not like knowing shit always makes it any easier to deal with.

"Listening objectively to what you've said, I'd say that this girl seems like a good match for the person that you're trying to become," Dr. Berry says after a moment. "As a father listening to a young man who has been very misguided in the past talk about his daughter, I'm a little less sure."

Puck swallows hard.

"You're totally gonna hate me," he mumbles, mostly to himself. "There's something else."

Dr. Berry looks at him expectantly; Puck notices that he hasn't even picked up his pad and pen from the coffee table.

"I started hanging out with Rachel when I realized that she was your daughter. Because I was afraid that she would tell you about the way I used to treat her, and then you would get me sent back to juvie."

He says it slowly, carefully, as much as he wants to just blurt it out. Not telling the truth has bitten him in the ass before, and he wants to just get it all out now. If this ruins any chance he has with Rachel, fine (even though that would suck), but at least he won't be sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"What were you afraid she was going to tell me?" Dr. Berry asks. Puck isn't sure whether or not he should be encouraged by how calm the guy sounds, and he's afraid to meet his eyes and see the expression there.

"I don't know if you know about Rachel getting slushied at school, but I was the one who started that." He forces himself to look at the doctor's face, but he can't read the expression. "I threw frozen drinks in her face, and because I did it, other people did, too." He takes a breath, but Dr. Berry still doesn't say anything. "For what it's worth, I feel like shit about it, and I made sure that it won't happen again."

"Does Rachel know that this is why you started taking an interest?"

"No." Puck feels like dirt when he says it. He hates that _this_ is the reason that he got to know Rachel, that if he hadn't been an asshole to her, he wouldn't have ever gotten to know how awesome she is.

"Noah." Dr. Berry leans forward and waits until Puck meets his eyes. "You need to tell her the truth. And I'm saying that as your therapist as much as her father."

"I'm afraid she's going to hate me. Like, I want her to be my girlfriend, but what if she hates me when I tell her the truth?"

Puck watches Dr. Berry scrub a hand over his face, then lean forward toward Puck again, resting his arms on his thighs. "I'm going to talk to you as her father right now, and not your doctor, and then I'm never going to do it again during an appointment like this, all right?" Puck nods, a little scared of the serious tone of the guy's voice right now. "Rachel is a very forgiving person. To a fault, really. That she forgave you for masterminding the slushying - which I did know about," he interjects with a sharp look in his eyes, "is proof of that. I knew that the two of you were becoming friends, though I didn't realize how serious you were about it."

"I am." It isn't even hard to say when it's the truth. Huh.

"Then you're going to have to tell her the truth and deal with the consequences."

Puck nods. It's good, simple advice.

"Good." Dr. Berry picks up his pad and pen from the table and leans back in his chair, assuming the posture he usually has for these appointments. "Should we change the subject?"

* * *

><p>He tells her on the phone because he's a fucking coward.<p>

Puck's trying to listen to what she's saying on the phone on Thursday night, but she's talking about these chicks, Maureen and Angela or someone, and he doesn't know who they are and he really doesn't care. All he can think about is what she's going to do when he tells her that this thing between them is built on the fact that he's a jackass and she's apparently the most forgiving person on the planet.

"I have to tell you something," he blurts out, interrupting the story that he hasn't been paying attention to anyhow.

"Okay," she draws out warily.

"Look, you should know that I feel like an asshole for this, and if I could take it back or change it or whatever, I would," he starts, because it feels important that she knows that. He takes a deep breath before he goes on. "When I realized that my shrink was your dad, I was afraid that you were going to tell him about the shit that I used to do and he'd get me sent back to juvie, and that's why I started talking to you and hanging out and stuff."

It's so quiet on the phone that Puck pulls it away from his ear to look at the screen and make sure the call hasn't dropped. She's still there, but the silence is weird.

"So you didn't need help in history," Rachel finally says, her voice quiet.

"Not really," he admits, "but studying with you did improve my grade, so."

She makes a noise that might be a laugh.

"But Rachel, even though my intentions or whatever sucked, I actually do like you. Like, _like_ you."

"Wait. You lied about needing help in school in an effort to befriend me because you were afraid that I was going to tell my father that you used to bully me. But during the course of all of this, you've decided that you actually have some sort of feelings for me."

"It sounds like one of those stupid romantic comedies when you say it like that," he mumbles.

"Noah."

"Yeah. I have," he struggles not to sigh, "_feelings_ for you, okay?" He does let out a sigh when she doesn't say anything. "I told your dad everything."

"I see."

Puck feels like he knows Rachel pretty well by now, and the fact that she doesn't have anything to say right now is freaking him out; Rachel always has something to say. _Always_. "Rach-"

"It feels like you lied to me," she interrupts, speaking softly. "I suppose you did a little, but I don't care that you didn't need help. But...I kissed you. I told you my secrets, things I've never admitted to anyone. I trusted you, and now you're telling me that it was all a twisted effort to stay on my father's good side."

"That isn't true," Puck insists. "That's how it started, but once I got to know you, it was about you." He doesn't know how else to say it, how else to make her believe that he cares about her and not about whatever shit she could tell her dad about him.

"I need some time to think about all of this, Noah," she finally says. His heart sinks. "I...I just need some time."

"Okay."

"I'm going to go."

"Bye, Rach."

He drops his phone on the bed beside him and flops back against the pillows. He didn't know that it was possible to feel worse than he did when he admitted all this stuff to her dad, but he totally does. Thinking about the way her voice sounded when she realized what he was telling her makes his stomach feel weird and heavy, kind of like it did when he was thirteen and Finn dared him to eat the entire fruitcake that was sent to the Hudsons by some distant relative.

The way he feels right now is all the proof that he needs that he wants to be with Rachel. The thought that she might not even want to be friends with him after all of this sucks almost as much as the idea of going back to juvie.

* * *

><p>Puck didn't realize how much he and Rachel talked until she stopped talking to him.<p>

She said she needed time, and he's going to give it to her. So he says hey when he sees her in the halls at school (mostly so people don't get it in their heads that he's done with her and try to start picking on her again, and a little bit because he just wants to see her smile directed at him), but otherwise, he leaves her alone. Since they aren't texting and talking, his phone becomes sort of useless. He's playing a lot of Angry Birds and not doing much else.

The more time Rachel takes to "think," the more Puck thinks that means she's going to tell him to fuck off.

He considers saying something about it to Dr. Berry when he goes to his appointment, because it's all he can think about, but it feels weird to talk about Rachel with the guy any more than he has to. Telling him about what had happened before was a necessity; telling him that Rachel is yanking Puck's chain (however unintentionally) now is more than Dr. Berry needs to hear. Instead, he goes back to basics, talking about how much he hates Duke and how his mom is still being really strict with his going out and stuff since he came back home in November.

"You are such a fucking mope," Santana accuses.

Puck's just standing at his locker after school on Friday, shoving his history book and some gym clothes that need to be washed into his backpack. Santana's bitchy commentary is unprovoked and unsolicited.

"And you are such a fucking bitch," he counters blandly. A lot of the time, he actually likes how bitchy Santana can be, but he likes it less when it's directed at him for no good reason.

She just puts one hand on her hip and looks at him. "Did the elf dump you, Noah?" He rolls his eyes. "You are aware that that's pathetic, right?"

"Just shut up, Santana."

She falls into step beside him when he closes his locker and turns to walk away, and her expression has softened when he glances down at her. "Look, are you okay? Because I don't know if I can deal with you being all depressed again like you were with Qui-"

"It's not like that," he interrupts. "I like her, and I may have fucked it up. You being you isn't helping."

Santana looks up at him thoughtfully, slipping through the door in front of him when he pushes it open. "You want me to talk to her?"

"Fuck no," he answers without hesitating. "Didn't you draw the cartoons in the girls' bathroom?"

"That was Quinn. Other than calling her Manhands and Munchkin and shit, I haven't done anything to Rachel," she tells him defensively.

Puck blinks down at her. "Yeah, definitely don't talk to her."

Santana rolls her eyes again and says, "Fine. Stop moping though. It's annoying."

She turns on her heel and is walking across the parking lot to her Mustang before he can say anything.

Conversations like that are exactly the reason that he's still friends with Santana. She's definitely a bitch, but once you're good with her, you're good forever.

* * *

><p>Puck is really shocked when he opens his front door on Saturday afternoon and sees Rachel standing on his porch.<p>

She's clutching the strap of her bag over her shoulder, standing perfectly straight and looking at him with her big brown eyes. "We have a history test next week," she says after a moment of him just standing there watching her. "It turns out that it's easier for me to study for these exams with you, so I thought I'd come see if you were interested."

Puck doesn't know what to make of the look on her face. It's almost like she's nervous.

"Yeah." He steps aside so she can come into the house. "I'm here alone, but-"

"That's fine," she interrupts, standing at the foot of the stairs and waiting to let him lead her up like he always does.

It's almost like it was the first time she came over to his house, with her sitting in his desk chair turned to face where he's sitting back against his headboard on the bed. Her notebook is balanced on her thighs, and she's quizzing him about Russia and czars and this Rasputin guy (who actually sounds kind of badass).

"Have you already studied for this test?" she asks after a while. Puck gives her a weird look. "You already know everything."

He shrugs. "I guess I just paid attention in class this time."

Puck really likes the little smile that spreads across her lips. "Let's take a break," she suggests, turning to set her notebook on his desk.

"Cool." Puck pushes his book aside and tips his head back to rest against the headboard, closing his eyes. He doesn't really know how to be around her now that she's 'thinking,' but if he looks at her, he's going to want to ask her if she's made up her mind and stuff. He lets himself totally zone out, to the point that he's startled when Rachel breaks the silence.

"I understand why you did what you did." He tips his head forward so he can look at her. "You should know though, that I never would have told my father about what you did, and even if I had, he wouldn't have done anything insidious with the information. We just aren't that sort of people."

He isn't totally sure what insidious means, but he thinks he knows what she's getting at; basically, her dad wouldn't have held the stupid shit Puck had done against him if he'd found out. (He thinks back to the conversation that he had with her dad, when Dr. Berry said that he already knew; this must mean that he knows without Rachel having told him about it, which is kind of a trip. It's not important right now though.) "I know that now," he tells her seriously. And it's the truth; he worried about it the whole time, yeah, but now that he's told the truth about everything, he knows that the Berrys are too good for the shady shit.

"I was afraid to trust you," she confesses after a moment, not quite meeting his eyes. "I was afraid that it was all an elaborate prank. Your history with Quinn, and with Santana..." She trails off, then takes a deep breath. "I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt, and it paid off. Underneath all the bravado, you're actually a very sweet person, and I like spending time with you, regardless of why you pursued the friendship in the first place."

He wants to say something, to tell her that he isn't as sweet as she thinks (he doesn't think that he is) or to tell her that he like spending time with her too. He can tell though that she's thought about what she wants to say, and he doesn't want to interrupt before she gets to the end of her little speech.

"I fell for you," she nearly whispers. "I can forgive your dishonesty because I understand where it came from, and I believe that you'll be honest with me from now on."

"I will," Puck insists quickly, moving to sit at the edge of the bed so her knees are between his. "And I haven't lied about anything else."

"I believe that, too."

He dares to reach for her hand, brushing the tips of his fingers over her palm. "So are we gonna be okay?"

She lets out a tiny breath of a laugh, then nods. "Yeah. We're going to be okay." She looks down at their hands in her lap, watching as Puck slips his fingers between hers. "So...you wanna make out?"

He's still laughing when she pushes him onto his back against the pillows, straddling his hips and leaning down to kiss him all gently.

* * *

><p>Monday morning, Puck finds Rachel at her locker and offers to walk her to her first class, earning himself an adorable little smile and the opportunity to walk the halls with her arm looped through his.<p>

If anyone thinks it's weird that they're obviously together now, they don't say anything. Puck thinks that people have gotten used to seeing him with Rachel in the halls enough that it doesn't even register that anything is different.

He thinks wrong, apparently.

"So you worked shit out with the short stack?" Santana asks, sliding into the seat next to his at lunch. She rolls her eyes when he glares. "Come on, that one isn't even mean. It's pancakes. Pancakes are delicious," she insists, scoffing when he still isn't impressed.

"Yeah, we worked it out," he admits. Santana won't let this go, he knows.

She watches him thoughtfully for a moment. "You really like her, huh?" He takes a huge bite of his sandwich to avoid having to talk to her and shrugs his shoulders. Of course, Santana knows all his tricks. "I'm happy for you or whatever," she admits. "Maybe she's not the loser we thought she was. And she's definitely an improvement on Quinn."

She leaves the table before he can swallow, but he feels weirdly good about the fact that Santana approves or whatever. It's nice to know there's someone on their side.

Rachel is waiting at his locker after school, leaned back against the metal with her hands clasped in front of her and her bag sitting at her feet. She stands on her toes to brush a kiss against his lips, then leans against the locker next to his to watch him gather his stuff to take home.

"Santana Lopez invited me to her house for a sleepover on Friday night," she tells him. "Should I be worried about her intentions?"

Puck can't help smiling at the concerned look on her face. He shoulders his backpack and slams his locker door closed. "Let me tell you about Santana," he says, offering Rachel his arm. "Walk with me."


End file.
